


Kylo Ren, (Accidental) Resistance Hero

by sinistercinnamon



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ahch-To, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Rose Tico, Ben Solo Pain Train, Emperor Hux, F/M, Force Ghost Leia, Han Solo would be proud, Humor, Hux is Not Nice, Kylo Ren Has No Chill, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Kylo Ren Redemption, Kylo Ren seeks redemption through the only method he knows how, Leia Dies, Slow Burn, Supreme Leader Armitage Hux, despite what you might think from the title or tags this isn't actually crack, don't worry Rey is not dead i wouldn't do that to you or Ben, epic use of the force, inappropriate mix of angst & humour, it's OK he's just not used to positive feedback, lightsaber construction, look he's trying to figure himself out give him a break ok, misuse of tagging system, mostly anyway, no-chill walking human disaster Kylo Ren, porgs, precious cinnamon roll rose tico, the porgs welcome their new dark overlord, which is basically killing everyone in his way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-07-10 07:25:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 61,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15944585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinistercinnamon/pseuds/sinistercinnamon
Summary: Kylo Ren is forced to flee the First Order when Hux stages a coup, but any hope he might have had of reconciling with Rey is dashed when his former troops move on the Resistance, wiping them out. Unable to sense Rey in the Force (& so believing her dead), he vows revenge & declares war on the whole First Order, with the help of only a very confused Resistance technician, a couple of droids, & some porgs.OR: Kylo Ren goes on a rollicking revenge rampage against a whole army & somehow becomes the new face of the Resistance as a result. BB-8 is so done. R2-D2 is even more done. Rose Tico isn't sure she signed up for this shit. But at least the porgs are happy.





	1. In Which Insomnia Can Save A Life

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there! My first Reylo fic! And it's a monster. Seriously. That thing in the summary about Kylo/Ben declaring revenge on the First Order? I'm 26,000 words in, on chapter 4, & I'm just about getting to that part. But while I haven't actually finished the damn setup of the fic, I've got it pinned down enough that I feel ready to post the first chapter.
> 
> Though, fair warning, while Rey isn't really dead as our dashing disaster of a space prince believes, they are separated for most of it.
> 
> Another heads up - this one for Rose fans: She doesn't show up until chapter 4, but I love her, so you needn't worry about starting this fic only to have her be trashed. If you're a Rose hater then you should definitely not bother reading & also I will fight you. If you are Loan Tran then I think you are awesome & I will deck anyone who even looks at you funny.
> 
> You should also be aware that, while I know the end goal of this fic, the exact path to get there is a little fuzzy, so tags & warnings may change, & I'll add more characters to the list. In addition to the already tagged characters, Poe, Finn & Chewie are for sure still alive, but I'm gonna hold off on tagging them for now until I'm a few chapters down the line & have some scenes planned out with them.

It was pure luck that saved him. Well, perhaps it was more accurate to say the Force, or maybe instinct. But it was luck that he chose the course he did.

He'd retreated to his quarters at his usual hour, and proceeded to get ready for bed as normal, but sleep would not claim him. Something held him back.

He'd always struggled with sleep. The constant distraction of a dark presence in your mind, the knowledge that your family saw you as some kind of problem to be fixed, waking up to find your uncle about to kill you, and spending the subsequent years committing deeds you don't think you will ever forgive yourself for - even though there should be nothing to forgive, because you were doing the right thing, of course you were, Snoke _promised_ \- will not lead to a peaceful rest.

Something had been different here though. No shadows and regrets haunted him tonight. No memories playing across the inside of his eyelids like they were the galaxy’s worst holoscreen. No pull to the Light whispering that he could fix things, make everything right again.

And certainly no dark presence in his mind. Not anymore.

He just… couldn’t sleep.

Well, okay, maybe some shadows and regrets. But far different to the ones that he was used to suffering through. And the Light now took the form of a person.

Rey.

In the days since Crait, he'd heard nothing from her - she'd shut down her side of the bond and was ignoring him completely. At first, he had been happy about that - or so he'd told himself. After all, she'd betrayed him! Gone for a weapon and chosen the Resistance over him. But as the days had gone on, and the loneliness of his new position and the fact that it did not offer the freedom he'd hoped for, but instead yet another prison, had begun to take its toll, and he'd thought more, and considered what he'd said to her, and what she'd said to him, he understood.

He'd offered her an impossible decision. To her the Resistance weren't some relic of a past that needed to die; they were the first people in her life to offer friendship. They weren't the cause that his mother had devoted more time to than she ever had to her own son; they were heroes fighting for freedom. Maybe she cared for him, beyond a simple wish to aid the Resistance by turning him to the Light. Maybe he would have been able to persuade her to join him, with more carefully chosen words, at another time or place.

But she would not have been able to live with herself if she'd turned her back on the Resistance. And everything she'd known of him would have told her that she needed a weapon, that there was every chance he would not react well to being turned down, betrayed as so many others already had. Her actions had been understandable when he thought about them, and he had.

“Let it all die.” Really? What had he been thinking? Had he been hit on the head during the fight? Did the giddy rush of freedom at finally having his own mind to himself cause him to lose all sense?

But her request had been equally impossible. He couldn't order a ceasefire - Hux would not have listened to him, probably would have refused to believe Snoke was dead, and then there would be the awkward explanation as to how Snoke had died – much harder to do without Hux being there in front of him to more easily intimidate, and without a convenient scapegoat to pin it on (though he had to wonder if Hux had really bought that – even he couldn’t be that stupid, surely?).

Oh and by the way, Hux, can you pretty please stop shooting at our enemies, no particular reason, why do you ask? Yeah, that would go over well.

The only way to get Hux to respect him was by demonstrating strength. But sparing the Resistance was a sign of weakness. There was no way for him to win.

But it would have taken more time to convince her it wasn't something he could do. That her belief in his power was, while extremely flattering, dead wrong. Either way, those ships would have been doomed.

Of course, if he'd known someone was about to make the whole dilemma moot by flying a cruiser into the ship, he might have been able to think a bit more carefully and that might have affected his decision. He could have taken the time to shape his words more carefully, instead of opening his mouth and letting stupid fall out.

OK, mostly stupid. Offering her the galaxy had to have been a good ploy (It was literally everything! All the things! What more could he offer?), and it was clearly just that he’d phrased it badly. He also still felt that that “…but not to me” line was a masterful yet understated demonstration of the depth of his feelings for her.

Everything else, though? Stupid. Stupidstupidstupid.

Perhaps he should have paid attention that one time when Han Solo, in some sort of attempt to bestow fatherly wisdom, had tried to give his son advice on How to Talk to Girls.

No, wait. Actually no. That would have been worse. He didn’t know how he could have fucked that speech up more, but if he’d used anything learned from Han Solo, Human Disaster, it would have turned out way worse, somehow.

He just didn't know how to apologise to her. And she hadn't let him through her walls anyway.

Eventually he'd admitted defeat, rolled out of bed and looked for something to do. But his rooms were in order, leaving nothing to tidy or organise. A brief check of his console revealed that he had done all his tasks for today and several that were not due until tomorrow. It was actually suspicious how little he had to do, considering he was effectively ruler of the galaxy. He doubted Snoke had been buried in datawork, but surely there should be more for him to see?

The First Order had been founded with the aim of learning from the mistakes made by the Galactic Empire, and had therefore dispensed with many strategies and methods beloved by its predecessor. Bureaucracy had not been one of those things.

(He knew this from experience, as every time he destroyed a piece of equipment in a rage, he was required to fill out Form EMR/53b, which was a frustrating and tedious experience that usually led him to destroy something else, which in turn forced him to fill out yet another form… He bet Darth Vader had never had to fill out forms.)

Someone was hiding things from him. Probably Hux. Oh who was he kidding? It was definitely Hux.

While getting to the bottom of this would give him something to do while he waited for any suggestion from his body that sleep might be on the cards for tonight, anyone with both the requisite security clearance and authority would be off-shift, and shaking down Hux would be less fun when the man was half-asleep.

Besides, wouldn’t it look a bit desperate and paranoid to go storming around in the middle of the night ranting about people keeping stuff from him? Or was it the mark of a good leader to state his requirements when he had them, thereby showing decisiveness?

Why hadn’t he listened to any of his mother’s lectures on good governance?

It just hadn’t seemed important at the time! He’d wanted to be a pilot, not a politician, and even that ambition had been brushed aside by his family when it became clear just how strong his powers were - and how strong the potential for darkness was in him - and their plans for him were adjusted from ‘he should probably get some training’ to ‘training should consume his every waking moment’, without anyone consulting him.

So here he was, son of a senator, grandson of another senator, adopted grandson of yet another, raised in a household where Mon kriffing Mothma was a regular dinner guest… and he was the most powerful figure in the galaxy, with no idea how any of it worked.

Whose idea had it been to put him in charge? Oh wait, it was his. Shit.

He sighed. Well, here was the familiar ‘regrets from childhood’ part of the night. Yay. Still, if nothing else that could usually kill hours worth of time… He looked at the chronometer. Five minutes had gone by since he’d last looked.

_Really?_

He tried meditating, but was unable to settle his mind properly to achieve peace, nor was he able to muster up enough emotion to connect with the darker side of the Force to reach a state of calm through venting distracting thoughts. He was just sitting there, in the dim light of his room, unable to sleep, alone…

Right, not helping.

He tried some training exercises, hoping to exhaust himself, but the nagging frustration of wanting to sleep but being unable to left him so agitated that he screwed up moves he should have been able to breeze through in his sleep.

At least if he _could_ get to sleep…

Alone, at night, with nothing to do, and he felt the loneliness creep in once more...

Unbidden, an old memory surfaced, of being unable to sleep some night long ago, curled up inside a panel in the walls of a different, far less clean and efficient ship, working on some repair job, a more improved fix for the ancient bodge job of a fix put in place by someone else (someone now dead) before finding himself back in his bunk the next morning, with vague memories of being carried back there in large furry arms.

Angry, he pushed that memory away. That boy was dead.

Although, maybe that wasn't totally a bad idea... Ship repairs were far below his station these days (hell, they’d been below his station even when he’d simply been Kylo Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren and Snoke’s apprentice), but he couldn't deny that they could have a calming effect. Focusing on a task to the exclusion of all distractions, a mental work out thanks to problem-solving… Yes, that could work.

He could go to the hangar where his TIE Silencer was - having thankfully been stored in an undamaged part of the Supremacy, and brought here from the wreckage - do some checks, perhaps come up with improvements. And if that failed, he could at least lurk in a quiet corner and watch TIE Fighters on patrol coming in and out. It beat staring at the walls of his quarters.

Task decided, he dressed, adding his helmet before leaving. He’d gone back to wearing it immediately after Crait. Snoke might have sneered at his reliance on it, but the old bastard was brutally right in noting that his apprentice wore his heart openly. He’d never learned to control his emotions (much to the likely chagrin of a great many First Order maintenance workers). Ben Solo had totally lacked his father’s skill at sabacc despite an encyclopaedic knowledge of the rules and ability to calculate the likelihood of any given card or hand, and Kylo Ren had been more concerned with trying to live up to his grandfather’s legacy than achieving inner peace.

And wasn’t the Dark Side supposed to be all about channelling strong emotion anyway? Maybe, but as far as he could figure from his limited experience, 90% of being a leader was about hiding from your inferiors the fact that you had absolutely no idea what you were doing and were terrified that somebody would notice and call you out on it.

And stress was an emotion that didn’t seem to show up in any Dark Side teachings that he knew of, which was an obvious deficiency in his opinion as it seemed to be his constant emotional state.

He should probably look into getting more to keep on standby. He’d had a few spares made, just in case, which at the time had seemed excessive – surely he was unlikely to lose his helmet, unless he also lost his head, in which case a mask would be the least of his concerns – but after tossing one aside on Starkiller and smashing the other to twisted scrap in a fit of pique, he was down to his last one.

He waved back the troopers stationed outside his chambers, telling them that he _was still in there, and was not to be disturbed_.

At this hour, the ship was relatively lightly staffed. He dodged those he could, mind tricked those he could not avoid. He couldn’t really say why. It wasn't as if they could stop him - he was Supreme Leader, after all. He told himself that he just didn't want to be bothered by people. Back when he was simply Snoke’s apprentice, he could stride through the corridors unmolested. His reputation had been enough to send people fleeing, and his position outside the First Order’s command structure had meant that people who required authorisation from a superior didn’t seek his attention unless it was relating specifically to a mission he was attached to, or an actual emergency. People did all they could to avoid his attention.

Now, while the fear was still there, people actually sought his attention. Before they would either run as fast as they could in the opposite direction or dive through the nearest door, or bury themselves in whatever errand they were assigned in an attempt to blend into the background and escape his notice. Now everyone would stop what they were doing to acknowledge his passing.

Where before people’s fear of him travelled ahead of him, like a shield to keep everyone away, now that shield seemed to reflect their fear back on him, and he felt suffocated. Tonight this was exacerbated by a strange feeling of tension in the air. Perhaps this was normal at this hour, and he simply had never noticed before. Perhaps this was simply people’s reaction to the loss of several ships, including their flagship, at Crait, easier to perceive due to not being buried by the busyness of day shift. Perhaps it was just his insomnia getting to him.

And of course those with more ambition would attempt to figure out where he was going and anticipate his needs. Which was obnoxious enough at any time, but now it was exactly what he didn’t want. His plans to distract himself by poking around in the guts of a starfighter would be interrupted by a bevy of people asking if he was _suuuuuure_ he didn’t want a tech or droid to do that?

It actually began to feel almost thrilling, sneaking around like this, as if he was some Resistance saboteur on a secret mission. He even found himself dodging security cameras, enjoying the little fantasy he'd conjured.

Some part of him, that sounded a lot like Snoke, chided him for indulging in a silly, childish game, unbecoming of the mighty heir of a feared Sith Lord.

He pushed the voice down. He was Supreme Leader. He ruled the galaxy. If he couldn’t have a little fun, then what was the point?

*****

He reached the hangar without incident, slipping past the guards with a wave of his hand and an " _I'm not here_." and skirted around the edges to reach his fighter, feeling a thrill when he avoided notice; he didn't even have to use the Force - everyone here at this hour what here because they had things to do, and were busy doing them. He even managed to snag a toolkit with no trouble.

He lost himself in checking the ship, removing panels to poke around inside. There were no actual repairs to be made, as such, but he checked the systems, contemplated improvements, and tightened some screws, completely forgetting the world outside his little ship, or the insomnia that had driven him here. He spotted an easy tweak to improve the hyperdrive and worked on that for a while, composing a report in his head to be sent off as soon as he’d had a chance to test and measure how much more efficiency his improvements brought.

He was just finishing up on rewiring a panel that was not to his satisfaction (really, what moof-milker had done that one? Even his fa- Even Han Solo would be ashamed of that. He would be having words...) when he felt a ripple of disturbance in the Force. A death. It was one of his Knights, all of them forever linked by what had happened that fateful night at the training temple. Something was very wrong. For one of the Knights of Ren to be taken down... He was getting to his feet when another hit him, and then another, and another...

For one to die was one thing, despite what some superstitious people might believe, he and his Knights were not immortal, and even a powerful Force user could be taken out if they made a mistake or were caught unawares or if their opponent was simply gifted with huge amounts of luck and/or firepower (the fact that the Jedi order used to number in the thousands but were now solely represented by a girl who'd only figured out she was Force sensitive a few weeks ago could attest to that). But all of them, at once? This was a co-ordinated effort with serious planning involved.

The Resistance? He'd assumed they were all but extinguished, but perhaps they had found a powerful ally, or felt that a bold move was the only way to strike back after being brought to the brink.

Suddenly aware of reality after being so immersed in his work, it occurred to him that there was more activity in the hanger than there had been before, but a quick glance at a chrono showed him he hadn’t been working long enough for there to have been a shift change, and there was a sense of intent, of agitation, as if they were all looking for someone.

Had the Resistance infiltrated the ship? That would make sense - if they'd put into place a plan to kill off the Knights of Ren, surely he'd also been a target. He pushed away the flash of hurt at the idea of his mother ordering his assassination like this. He was about to get to his feet, to look out the viewport, demand a status report.

His speculation was interrupted by the access hatch opening and someone climbing into his ship.

And then the interloper locked eyes with him, crouching down in his position where he'd not been visible from outside, and his eyes widened, and in that moment Kylo knew it was him they were searching for.

"Well, is he in there?" came a voice from outside.

With a gesture, he froze the man and said softly, " _I am not here_."

"He is not here," the man repeated, dully.

There was an exasperated sigh from outside. "It was a longshot, but it was worth a look." The sound of footsteps told him that whoever had spoken was walking away.

He turned to the man, a low-ranking officer, who looked terrified. With very good reason. He pulled the man toward him and tore into his mind, not even trying to be subtle about it, putting his hand over the officer’s mouth to muffle his cries.

They were looking for him alright. Hux had put word out to the entire First Order that he had been the one to kill Snoke and was therefore guilty of high treason. But his anticipation of a smooth takeover had not gone as he hoped when the gas-masked troopers had entered the Supreme Leader’s quarters and reported back that Kylo Ren was not in there lying in a pool of blood coughed up from his lungs, as had been expected.

Nobody had seen him, and he'd managed to avoid enough of the surveillance cameras that they'd only been able to narrow down his possible location to… literally anywhere on the ship. Hux was so desperate that he'd declared that anyone who brought him Kylo Ren's head would get a promotion and a bonus. This man knew nothing of what had happened to his Knights, but it would make sense for Hux to kill them off. Like him, they were not really part of the First Order hierarchy, rather they were a small off-shoot that answered to Snoke. And after that, their loyalty was to Kylo. They worked for the First Order, and were part of it, but not at the same time. Hux could not only not guarantee their loyalty but risked a backlash if they protested the removal of their commander. He probably didn't know that Force users could sense the deaths of those close to them, or he would have made sure not to make a move until he had Kylo in his sights. Or perhaps he was desperate. Or just foolish enough to accept the word of the mind-tricked guards stationed at his door.

He needed to leave, and conveniently he was in a ship... But of course, his was the only fighter of its type, making it noticeable, and even now he was essentially out of the First Order, nobody would likely take it out anywhere, so he couldn't pretend to be a patrol ship or anything like that. His only option was to make a break for it and hope that the increased speed and efficiency compared to a regular-issue TIE, combined with the element of surprise, was enough to get him clear with only a minimum chance of engagement.

As for the interloper, there was the issue of what to do with him. Killing him was an easy solution, but he had no wish to spend time in a confined space with a corpse and a corpse lying in the hangar would attract attention. Having him walk away was the best option, but mind tricks weren’t infallible and if he let the man go back to the search there was a risk someone or something might trigger a memory that would break through any instructions to forget what he’d seen.

Frustrated by the dilemma, he jabbed the man hard in the ribs, though he barely reacted, too stunned from the rather brutal invasion of his mind. His fingers met something hard. Huh. Had they added light armour to officers’ uniforms? It turned out to be a small flask. He took a sniff. Bootleg alcohol, brewed in some corner of the ship by someone frustrated at the meagre ration allotted (or one of those who weren't even allowed to drink in the first place). It was one of those things that was supposedly against regulations, but most people turned a blind eye to so long as they got a share.

That gave Kylo an idea. He sprinkled some of the drink onto the man’s clothes and poured a small amount into his mouth. Not too much – overdoing it rendering him drunk for real would attract too much attention and someone might think to retrace the man’s steps – but enough that anyone interacting would him would smell the alcohol on his clothes and would treat anything he said with scepticism.

He looked through the man’s pockets to see if there was anything else usable, but there was nothing aside from a small datapad, and he already had one of his own, tucked away in an inner pocket of his coat.

He did remove the man’s blaster – he might end up having to fight his way out of here if his ship got disabled, and the more weapons he had the better. And if he managed to get away from here, he might need to disguise himself, and using an all-to-recognisable lightsaber or all-too-obvious Force abilities would blow his cover. Or he might just need to take down a target at a distance. Who knew? Best to be prepared.

(He angrily pushed away the stray thought that carrying a blaster while travelling through the galaxy was a habit from childhood, instilled by a father who had had to fight to survive from a young age and had never been able to let go of that time, making sure to pass those survival skills on to his son.)

He shook the man to wake him from his stupor. _“You have not seen me. You will leave and go to medbay. If anybody asks you anything, you will tell them you do not feel well.”_

The man repeated the instructions groggily and staggered out of the hatch.

He raised his head and peered out of the cockpit to watch as the man staggered out of the hangar, hoping nobody would notice his awkward exit from the Silencer and get suspicious. Everyone was too busy, however.

Relieved, he sat back to consider his next move. He'd bought some time by letting people think he wasn't on his Silencer, but he couldn't guarantee how long it would be before somebody came by to double-check, and he was starting to get uncomfortable (he was not a small man and the console of a TIE fighter was fairly minimal). He needed to get out of here, but he’d only get one shot at this, so he needed to pick his moment.

He also needed to make sure that once he got away, they couldn’t follow, so he went back to the hyperdrive, this time to override the component that allowed the ship to be tracked through hyperspace. An easy enough process considering the Silencer was equipped to be able to hide from sensors and trackers of any kind, meaning the First Order had had to install a device to give themselves a loophole to actively override one of the main functions of the ship. Until a few minutes ago he'd considered it a useful feature, a way for the First Order to know where he was if something went wrong and he needed backup or extraction, like the tracker in his belt that had enabled his removal from the disintegrating Starkiller Base (though he’d since removed that, not wanting Hux to be able to know his every movement around the ship). But now it was a liability. Ha. Hux had been so smug as he'd presented his new Supreme Leader with the report detailing exactly how he'd been able to crush the Resistance. That's what you get for your smugness, Hux.

Hux could still plug his precious algorithm into a computer and have it try to spit out an estimate, but without some sort of signature to track he’d have better luck pinning a star chart to a wall and throwing a dart at it.

He had just finished that and was pondering what coordinates to input – ideally somewhere out of the way where he wouldn’t be noticed for the short time he was there (long enough to calculate another few sets of coordinates, to jump to one after another until he could be sure he couldn’t have been followed) - when an announcement blared across the hangar: "All fighters, please be advised that the Resistance has been located on Marridene. The Conqueror is closer and will be engaging the remainder of the enemy forces, but please return to refuel in anticipation of possible deployment. Stand by for further instructions."

The Resistance. Rey!

He had to warn her. She needed to get away. He couldn't allow her to get hurt.

And there was another, more selfish reason. He needed a place to go.

Much as he hated to admit it, the Resistance was his best chance. He could try to go it alone and could probably manage alright - he'd gone on enough trips in the Falcon when he was younger, and had picked up plenty of his father's tricks (mainly because one of those tricks was 'using an adorable child to sucker some poor mark', which had required his co-operation, and therefore had been fully aware of what Han got up to, even though he had supposedly left his criminal days behind and become a respectable citizen). But that had been when he was an adorable moppet of a child, and while Han might not have won any Best Father in the Galaxy awards, Chewie had never let him out of his sight. Now, he really was on his own, with no wookie with a bowcaster to watch his back, and a galaxy full of enemies.

He'd mostly worn a mask, but he'd gone without it enough that a few people knew his face (and more would soon enough, as Hux would broadcast it to the galaxy), and the moment he used his powers it'd be a giveaway.

His best chance was getting to the Resistance and trading every bit of intelligence he had for protection. They'd probably try to kill him as well, but his mother would intervene. Hopefully. They'd at least stop bounty hunters getting their hands on him.

 _'Rey!'_ he thought, as hard as he could. _'Rey, please listen to me!'_

Nothing. He pushed as hard as he could on her mental wall, desperate. _'Please! They're coming for you! You need to run! Now!'_

He needed to go. Now or never. He probably wouldn't make it in time, but if the attack hadn't started yet and Hux dithered enough on giving the go-ahead due to being distracted by his power grab, and if he really pushed the hyperdrive on this thing, he might make it in time to help. If nothing else, that would give him some credit with the Resistance.

He ran through the startup procedure as quickly as he could, still hunkered down on the floor so as not to be visible from outside. As soon as things were ready, he pulled himself into the seat, and removed the security tether only a second before he launched, immediately inputting the co-ordinates and making the jump to lightspeed without considering the wisdom of doing that before he was properly clear.

The control tower barely had a chance to squawk out a protest before he was gone.

The planet wasn't that far away, but every second felt like an hour, as he frantically tried over and over again. What if he couldn't reach her? What if it was too late and the attack was already underway? No, he couldn't let himself think about that!

He thought for a moment about trying to make contact with his mother, but he couldn't bring himself to face that.

He attempted the only other option he could think of -  a normal message. He had no knowledge of what channels or codes the Resistance were currently using. The best thing he could think of was to send it to the Falcon, and hope that someone was monitoring the comms there, and also that nobody had modified or replaced that ancient radio. He had no way of securing the message (not if he wanted to be sure it could be understood and read by its recipients in a timely manner) but it’s not like the First Order didn't know where they were. Worried that an anonymous unencrypted message would be dismissed by some comm tech as a trick, he signed it as Ben Solo (after a brief hesitation before considering the wisdom of signing it with Kylo Ren).

He had no guarantee that would reach them however. The First Order would almost certainly be jamming comms around the planet. So he kept trying to reach Rey. Over and over again.

He was getting truly desperate, and then there was a moment where he felt her relent, and it was such a relief to sense her that he couldn't speak for a few seconds, forgetting the urgent reason he was trying to get in touch, and she snarled at him, 'Stop it! I'm trying to concentrate, and pushing you away is giving me a headache!' and he turned to find her apparently sitting on a control panel, the two halves of the lightsaber in her hands. There were tears in her eyes.

"Rey, please, you need to listen to me-" before she cut him off.

"Stop it. You chose your life. This has to stop, Kylo."

He use of that name was like a stab in the heart, but he couldn't let that dissuade him. "Please! The First Order knows where you are! They're coming for you! You have to get away!"

She seemed about to respond, but then she suddenly staggered, grabbing on to a wall or piece of furniture that he could not see, her eyes widening as she looked off to one side. "They're here!"

There was something else he needed to tell her. An important conclusion that he has reached over the long days and nights since Crait.

"Rey," he reached out for her, and she turned to face him again. "I-"

But then she was gone.

He sat there unable to move for the moment, terrified of what might happen to Rey. Would she be able to get away? Would she even try, or would she attempt some heroic last stand out of dumb nobility?

All he could do was sit there and hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The planet the Resistance have hidden on is completely made up, because I am far too lazy to scour Wookiepedia for planets with the necessary criteria to fit what I need for the story, simply for a place they're never going to visit again.
> 
>  
> 
> Next chapter: Rey Ponders Her Love Life


	2. In Which Rey Ponders Her Love Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's some Rey POV for you guys.

Rey sat in a quiet corner of the base, looking down at the two halves of the broken lightsaber in her hands.

Strictly speaking, all the base was quiet, since there weren’t a lot of people left to fill the place with anything you might call hustle and bustle, and everyone was subdued and quiet after recent events. Losing so many taking down Starkiller. Losing even more fleeing D’Qar. And then that desperate last stand on Crait…

She could have gotten some real distance from everyone by retreating to some far area as yet undisturbed by the new arrivals. Which was a depressing thought, as this base had been intended as an off-shoot base, a minor staging post for small groups of Rebel Alliance fighters to regroup, launch attacks in nearby systems, stop off for repairs, and so on. A tiny place to house a small part of a galaxy-spanning conflict.

And now it was too big for everyone they had.

But she hadn’t wanted to disappear in case anyone needed her. She snorted. Scratch ‘in case’. She gave it ten minutes before someone called on her again.

While the Resistance were used to making what they could from old equipment, her lonely years of desperate scavenging had given her expertise in whether anything could be wrung out of a piece of long-abandoned Imperial era tech when you only have limited repair tools on hand, as well as a rough idea of the street value of a part that they couldn’t use themselves and so could spare in trade.

Oh, and using the Force to move heavy equipment back into place. Not exactly the glamorous and heroic life of a Force user that she had envisaged while listening to the stories of offworlders around crackling campfires back on Jakku.

It wasn’t that she was resentful. Nothing like that. The Resistance was a worthy cause. The First Order needed to be stopped. And she was glad to have friends and colleagues around.

But it was a bit much for someone who had grown up completely alone with only intermittent interactions with others, to suddenly find herself crammed together with a group of people with no respite. Nobody had ever told her that having friends could be exhausting or even suffocating at times.

She wished she’d gone with Rose, who’d been sent out for supplies, even though that was Rey’s area of expertise, and she’d got the impression Rose hadn’t wanted to go. But when she’d volunteered she’d been told they needed her here to help with repairs and setting the place up. While it _was_ true that her scavenging knowledge was probably more useful digging through the decrepit equipment here than on a supply run, Rey had smartly translated that as ‘Oh hell no. We are not letting the last Jedi wander off out of our sight into unknown territory. You are going to stay right here in this fortified base and move these boxes around.’

She couldn’t even sit quietly and retreat into her head to mull over her thoughts while she worked, because someone would see her looking pensive and decide to be helpful by getting her to talk about what was troubling her. That would not go over well.

_‘Hey there, Rey! Credit for your thoughts?’_

_‘Oh, nothing much. Just thinking about how I threw myself into the heart of enemy territory of my own free will because I have a thing for the Jedi Killer. Did you ever imagine he had such kissable-looking lips? Man, I wanted to jump his bones the whole time we were going up in the turbolift to see Snoke. Oh, yeah, and he killed Snoke to save my life, and then we both fought his guards together and it was super hot and I wanted to jump him again, but you were all dying and that was pretty distracting and a definite mood killer. And did I mention that we can talk to and see each other through the Force? And he keeps trying to talk to me? No big deal, just the Supreme Leader of the First Order and me being able to have secret conversations. Nothing worrying there at all. And I can’t stop thinking about him. Oh and I know you guys probably expect me to kill him for you, but next time I see him I can’t guarantee that I won’t try to climb him like a kriffing tree instead. Anyway, how are you?’_

Yeah. Not well at all.

At least she’d managed to get out of any awkward explanations about how she somehow knew of the First Order’s change in leadership. Leia had announced that she’d been able to sense that Snoke’s dark presence was no longer visible in the Force, and a relieved Rey had frantically nodded and concurred. Wow, wonder how that happened. What a mystery, right?

She could probably have used this as an excuse herself, but it came with more authority coming from Leia, and the truth was that Rey couldn’t feel anything different. Maybe it was being too close to it when it happened, maybe it was that Leia had spent several decades attuning herself to the ebb and flow of the galaxy, maybe it was just that she had kept close watch on the creature who’d lured her son away. Maybe she was no good at this and she was going to let everyone down…

She had had some people asking about her time with Luke and how and why the pair of them had chosen just then to come back, and what training with him had been like, but the porgs infesting the Falcon could usually be relied upon to do something funny, or cute, or both, and she could point to them as a distraction. She had also taken to wearing a mournful expression whenever Luke’s name was mentioned, and people quickly stopped asking about him, worried about disturbing her grief.

She _was_ sad, but not devastated. She’d sensed his end had been peaceful, and that he’d chosen to go out as he did. And as someone who’d grown up in a harsh environment, she had a more prosaic attitude towards death than most people. Folks die, but however bad that felt, the universe kept going regardless, and you can’t waste too much time thinking about it, or you’ll end up dead too. And as deaths went, a quiet passing on a beautiful island, having said goodbye to your loved ones, sure beat collapsing in the desert, lost and alone and being eaten alive by animals not patient enough to wait a few more minutes.

Mostly she was just terrified. She’d just learned she had this power, and she was somehow expected to save the galaxy, with only a few lessons (which had basically consisted of ‘don’t even bother’) from an old man, and a few skills gleaned from the mind of her worst enemy. Maybe Leia could teach her, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask. The woman was putting so much faith in her, and probably assumed that Luke had taught her all sorts of useful things. Rey didn’t want to disappoint her by admitting how little she knew. And that some of what she did know wasn’t stuff she could use. (One night on the Falcon, driven to distraction by the snoring of a man next to her, she’d wished for one frustrated moment that she could make his breathing stop, and then realised to her horror that she knew exactly how to do this. It hadn’t been the snoring keeping her awake after that.)

Things weren’t quite as bleak and hopeless as they’d seemed on Crait, however. A second wave of pleas sent out from the Falcon as they’d searched for a new base, had garnered a few replies to the effect of, ‘Hold your tauntauns! We actually have to get authorisation before we send military support no matter how worthy the cause might be, and then figure out who we can spare, and who out of those we can trust not to sell you out, and we have to be careful about doing so because the First Order is breathing down our necks!’. So that was something.

Didn’t mean they would actually get help. Those people could all decide that they couldn’t spare any support after all. And plenty still hadn’t replied. Some had replied with a polite but firm denial and a request to never ever bother them again. Some hadn’t bothered being polite.

Leia was considering sending someone out to check on the holdouts, as soon as they were settled and had licked their wounds a bit. They might have failed to respond because someone was holding a blaster to their heads – literally or metaphorically. In which case they needed help, and in turn would be more likely to support the Resistance.

The more likely explanation was that they just didn’t want to help but couldn’t bring themselves to come out and say it, but hey, there was a saying about rebellions and hope...

Poe’s squadron had also been sent out on a recruitment drive before the Resistance had had to flee D’Qar and were as yet unaccounted for. It didn’t look good – they hadn’t checked in at all, as far as Rey knew – but there could be a perfectly good reason for that.

And one of them was a journalist who could, if asked, put together a professional-looking propaganda campaign to let the galaxy know that rumours of the Resistance’s demise had been greatly exaggerated (Okay, _slightly_ exaggerated.) and that they welcomed new members. That seemed more promising – the destruction of the Hosnian system had left the galaxy reeling and there had to be people out there wanting to fight back but not knowing how. Unfortunately, like the rest of Black Squadron, nobody knew where she was or if she was even still alive.

There was a twisted sort of irony to the fact that their attempts to recruit more support were being stymied by vital personnel who had been sent on a recruitment mission. Hopefully the team was still alive somewhere and news of the Battle of Crait had driven them to redouble their efforts to reach out to potential allies.

Most people hadn’t known the First Order existed, and those that did either dismissed them as Imperial remnants playing soldiers in the Unknown Regions, not caring for the small but significant number of Outer Rim planets under their control, or actively desired a return to the days of the Empire and welcomed their new First Order overlords.

Now though, the First Order had announced itself with a loud bang, and people who had rolled their eyes at Leia and called her a warmonger and doomsayer had probably changed their tune. The Resistance just needed to reach out to this new pool of recruits.

That was only the first step though. They had to filter out informants, find places to train the new recruits (at least temporarily, until they’d been assessed and could be trusted to both not betray them and also not to shoot their own foot off with a blaster), and keeping all of this as much off the First Order’s radar as possible.

Leia spent a lot of time in deep conversation with people trying to make all this happen, and in the meantime there was nothing to do but wait and plan.

Surprisingly, the First Order seemed to be doing the same. With the destruction of the Senate they were now the dominant power in the galaxy and had successfully swatted away the insect that was harrying them. They should be celebrating, demonstrating their strength and power.

But the propaganda broadcasts the Falcon had received through the HoloNet had attracted puzzled mutterings. They looked impressive enough to Rey, but to more experienced members of the Resistance (so, everyone but her and Finn - though, he’d been bombarded with First Order propaganda his whole life, so he probably didn’t count in this case), the consensus was that they weren’t going as all-in as they could have been.

This was the time to really try to bend the galaxy to their will, to present themselves as saviours, and while they were doing that, they seemed to be holding back somehow. It was as if they were waiting for something. But what? The obvious solution was not a welcome one: They were waiting to destroy what was left of the Resistance, & were expecting to do that in a short enough timeframe that they were fine with holding off on the victorious speeches for a little while.

She looked back down at the lightsaber and sighed. Lifting equipment was all very well, but she wouldn’t be much help to anyone if she couldn’t get this fixed.

She might be able to weld the casing back together, and even if she couldn’t, it wouldn’t be difficult to make a new one from scratch, but several components inside were obviously damaged from the heat generated by all the tension the saber had been under ( _you and me both_ , she thought) and would need to be replaced. She could probably get replacements easily enough – there didn’t seem to be anything _too_ exotic, and the Resistance would bend over backwards to find just the right parts if they knew she needed them to repair her lightsaber.

The crystal was her biggest worry. It was definitely broken. But could it be fixed? They were supposed to have some sort of sentience, and she'd heard stories of them being ‘bled’ and ‘healed’. That suggested to her that repair was possible. Assuming those stories were true, of course - ‘random travellers round a Niima Outpost campfire' wasn’t exactly a perfect source in this area.

Then there was the issue of figuring out how the components fit together – even without taking it apart, she could see that things were badly melted and scorched, severed wires twisted away from wherever they’d originally been attached. At least nothing was completely destroyed as far as she could make out, but it was all just enough to obscure detail and ensure there would probably be a lot of winging it involved in the repairs. But that was just from a rough assessment peering down into the insides. Maybe things would look better once she had a chance to open it up. She hadn’t wanted to on the Falcon, as there had been no privacy, and she didn’t want to work under the added pressure of witnesses expecting her to somehow fix the weapon right there and then. As soon as the base was set up and she had some time to herself, she could get to work.

She’d hoped the Jedi texts she’d taken from Ahch-to (hey, it wasn’t as if anyone else was using them) would help, but some used an ancient writing system that wasn’t even one of the many, many languages Threepio could translate (and boy had she ever regretted asking him…). Even the ones written in languages either of them could understand used archaic words and phrases and stylised handwriting that were a struggle for a scavenger who’d taught herself to read from scant materials.

As far as she could tell though, based on illustrations and what she or Threepio could read, there was no Padawan’s Guide to Your First Lightsaber in there. Evidently the ancient Jedi had been too busy meditating to write that part down, or if they had, that volume had been lost.

Normally, using guesswork and trial and error wouldn’t be something she thought twice about (worse case scenario the equipment would be irreparably damaged and she’d miss out on the extra fraction of a portion Unkar might have deigned to give her for it), but that was a bad idea when dealing with an unfamiliar piece of equipment meant to channel huge amounts of energy through a magic crystal.

She thought of another blade she’d held recently, the fierce thrum of energy barely contained, just like the man who wielded it. No, this wasn’t a repair task where she could just wing it and hope for the best.

He’d made his lightsaber himself, hadn’t he? First when trained by Luke, and then remade it when he turned to the Dark Side and needed to modify it to handle its broken crystal. He would totally know whether it could be fixed and exactly how to do it.

Great. The only person in the whole galaxy who had the expertise needed to repair and, if necessary, modify her lightsaber, and he was the person she was supposed to fight with it. She slumped back against the wall, kicking her heels in frustration against the crate she was sitting on.

She could feel the connection to him like a thread tied to her ribs, sometimes pulled taut, and sometimes slack, but constantly _there_ , and she wanted nothing more than to pull on it. He was her equal in the Force, the only person who had some idea what she was going through, and fighting beside him had felt like nothing else. He’d had actual training from not one, but two masters (though she’d prefer he kept whatever Snoke had taught him to himself) and had repeatedly offered to teach her. She could really use some guidance.

She’d sensed him trying to reach her a few times, and she desperately wanted to reach out, even if just to talk to someone who didn’t look at her with expectation or awe. It had been flattering at first, having people look at her like she was something, but it quickly started to feel suffocating. When she’d confided in him, she’d told him that she’d never felt so alone as she had in that cave, staring at her own reflection. An impressive feat for someone who had grown up enduring a harsh and solitary existence. But now she felt lonelier than ever.

But the things he’d said to her in the throne room…

Dismissing her friends and telling her that she should let them die? Did he really expect her to accept that?

And the way he’d talked to her about her parents had been crushing. She’d always known, deep down that they’d left her without a backward look, but she’d denied it, pushed the knowledge down, hoping desperately that she’d been wrong, unable to accept that she’d been abandoned, and over time that hope had transformed into a belief, and then a certainty. But she’d always felt an ache inside, every time she’d insisted they would be back, that all this was temporary, every time she’d made a mark on the wall of her AT-AT. She’d been unable to comprehend someone leaving a child to such a life as she’d had, even as she’d grown and learned how the harshness of Jakku could scrub away all kindness, so she’d refused to accept that that’s what could have happened. She’d blanked out any doubting voice that could whisper that anyone who could leave her to this life was not worth waiting for.

It’s something she should have long ago accepted. A chain tying her to Jakku that Unkar Plutt had been happy to help forge, knowing it was the only thing that kept her at his mercy.

But that hadn’t given him the right to throw it in her face like that.

He’d broken away from a family that had loved him, however much they might have failed him; she’d never really had one. How dare he snap at her for wishing otherwise? How dare he tell her to let old things die, when to her, these things were all so new?

And telling her that they were simply junk traders who had sold her for booze that probably hadn’t been worth a credit, let alone a child, that they were dead, had been cruel.

She’d known he wasn’t lying, sensed the truth of his words, and a part of her had welcomed some scrap of knowledge of the people she had forgotten, who had faded in her mind until all she had were hazy memories of the back of a departing ship.

But was that really the time and the place for revealing that? Was that really the way to do it? Surely he knew better? He was older and far more worldly that her, and in the short time Rey had known his mother, she’d always seemed to know the right thing to say to inspire, so he couldn’t be that bad with words. He had to have known what he was doing.

She’d let herself believe that he cared about her, but now she didn’t even know anymore.

He’d listened so patiently and intently when she’d vented about her visit to the cave on Ahch-to, without judging her. And he’d seemed so sincere when he’d asked – no, begged! – her to join him, and she’d wanted to believe he’d meant it, that he’d meant all of it. And there’d been the vision of them, together, so wonderful and clear.

But he’d put her in restraints and taken her straight to his master, even though he had to have known what Snoke planned. And as soon as the creature was dead, his first action was to declare himself ruler of the galaxy, at the head of a regime that brutalised and tortured.

She wanted to believe there was still good in him. But she’d spent so many years believing her family cared about her when they never had. Was this just more of the same? Was she doomed to always have faith in people who didn’t deserve it?

Several nights spent lying awake and thinking, replaying the scene over and over in her mind, had left her wondering if she’d made her own mistakes. Hadn’t it been her that had turned away first?

The way he’d looked at her as he’d dispatched that last guard with the lightsaber she’d thrown him… It had been heated and full of deep meaning, fixed upon her like she was all that existed for him in the universe…

And she’d immediately broken it and rushed to the window, pointing out at the Resistance fleet and demanding that he save them, and his attention had been drawn away, to the body of his former master, and the throne it sat on.

Not that the fate of her friends hadn’t been urgent… But if she’d only held his gaze a fraction of a second longer? If she’d run towards him to plead for her friends instead of away from him? Would that have changed things?

And could it? Did he even have the power to do what she’d been asking? What exactly was his rank before he’d claimed the title of Supreme Leader? Could he even have ordered a ceasefire? And even if he’d had the authority, would anyone have listened in time? If Poe had commed her while they had some part of the First Order at their mercy and said that Leia was dead and she should hold off the attack, she would probably have a few questions.

She’d had something of a crash course in the First Order and its pecking order since Crait. As the news of Snoke's death had swept through the Resistance (which hadn’t taken long), it had set off a discussion about who had replaced him as Supreme Leader (most people had settled on Kylo Ren, who had looked to be in command at Crait, but a vocal minority had argued that General Hux was a likely candidate and that Ren’s appearance to face down Luke was because he was viewed as expendable by his new commander). Which had turned into a debate about how both the loss of the Supreme Leader and Captain Phasma, as well as the undoubted hundreds of others on board the Supremacy, had shaken up the command structure.

On Jakku, there’d been two ranks: People with power, and people without power (she’d been in the latter category). Those with power wanted to keep it, and generally did, those without wanted it, and rarely got it. That was about it. There were occasionally conflicts within those categories – a border dispute as people who commanded different territories disagreed over where their dominions ended exactly, a tussle between scavengers over a particularly valuable piece of salvage – but that was as complex as it got.

She’d guessed that the First Order was somewhat more complex – she’d spent her life crawling through Imperial warships after all, and while most of the electronics were long dead and data storage mostly either too badly damaged of looted well before she got to it, she’d scrounged up just enough looking for new flight sims or computer parts, and it stood to reason a star destroyer would be more complicated than a trading outpost – but the discussion quickly left her reeling from information overload.

There were names of people she’d never heard of in her brief time in the Resistance but turned out to be vital to the running of the First Order, ranks that to her sounded identical in level, but confusing them would cause even the most laidback protocol droid to blow its circuits. (Threepio, who could not remotely have been described as laidback, had fled the room wailing when she’d asked if a Sergeant was above a Lieutenant.)

There were stories of bitter rivalries over promotions, clashes between departments, posts that were particularly coveted and ones that amounted to punishment. A divide between people who had been part of the Empire and wanted the First Order to be exactly the same but with slightly updated uniforms, and those who had joined later, and saw the Empire as having the right idea but felt it hadn’t gone far enough. Above all, a rigid command structure that must be obeyed at all costs.

Yet at the same time there were subtle variations, things that people who knew the First Order understood to be true. The inflexibility of the command structure might mean there was an order to the ranks, but amongst those who held a given rank, some held more power than others, sometimes able to exert more influence than they should.

Phasma, for instance, was literally a glorified Stormtrooper, and a relatively new hire compared to other First Order officers, yet her influence had been felt throughout the First Order, which gave her power far beyond her apparent rank. Hux (who Poe insisted on referring to as ‘Hugs’) was one of several Generals, all of whom were older than him, but was viewed as higher as he’d essentially inherited his father’s position, and had come up with and oversaw the Stormtrooper training regime.

She’d asked, trying to make it sound like a natural question that was part of the discussion, where Kylo Ren had fit in the hierarchy. “We’re thinking he took over, right? So does that mean he was second in command?”

Nobody had been able to give her a solid answer. As best as anyone could gather, he was Snoke’s apprentice, and led the group known as the Knights of Ren, but they weren’t officially part of the First Order’s structure, and Dark Lord’s Lackey wasn’t a proper military rank.

According to Finn, he was addressed as ‘Commander’ (which was generic as ranks went) and ‘Sir’ (which is exactly what you’d call someone who had the power to crush your windpipe with a mere twitch of his fingers).

“All I know is, he could order about pretty much anyone, and Phasma followed his lead. No idea how high up that went though. There were rumours of a rivalry between him and Hux, but I have no idea if that was some kind of power struggle from two people on equal footing, or if one was jealous of the other having more power. Hell, it might have been a load of bantha shit and they could be best buddies. They were all the way at the other end of the food chain from me. Lotta space for stories to come outta nowhere. Honestly, the higher the rank, the more I tried to avoid whoever it was. Getting noticed only ever meant trouble.”

So she might have been pushing him into a corner, getting frustrated at him for not fulfilling an impossible request. It would have been nice for him to explain that to her, but it had taken the Resistance, with the aid of diagrams, hours to explain how the First Order worked to her, so expecting him to be able to pull that off in time to save what was left of the Resistance fleet might have been a bit much.

Assuming he really cared enough about her, or anyone, to even _want_ to save them.

But if he didn’t care, why had she seen him, kneeling on the floor of the base, looking broken? Was he sorry for what he’d said, or was that just her imagination, seeing disappointment at having failed to fully defeat the Resistance and telling herself it was something else. She could have sworn he had tears in his eyes though…

It had taken all her willpower to shut him out. She’d wanted so much to reach out to him, to yell at him for hurting her, to apologise for leaving him like that without an explanation, to ask him why he’d chosen the First Order.

But she couldn’t waver. She had to believe she’d done the right thing. Even if he was sorry, he was committed to this course he’d set himself on. The future she’d envisaged would never come to pass.

As if she’d somehow summoned him with her thoughts, she felt him trying to contact her again. This time though, there was a sense of urgency behind it. She so very nearly…

No. She clamped down and forced him away, blocking him out. The Resistance was relying on her.

He kept trying though, and it wasn’t long before she could feel the beginnings of a headache. Was this his new strategy? Scramble her brains so she couldn’t help take him down? Well, let him try!

Despite her efforts however, he found a weak point in her wall, and she felt him break through, and there was the now-familiar sensation of an utter silence that was, impossibly, deafeningly loud, as everything else seemed to fade away into the background.

She sensed him, sitting across from her on another crate, but refused to look at him. For all the effort he’d expended in getting her attention, he didn’t seem in a hurry to speak, like he was surprised he’d managed it. _That makes two of us._

Before he could collect himself (and before she could give herself a chance to change her mind and surrender to him), she snarled at him, 'Stop it! I'm trying to concentrate, and pushing you away is giving me a headache!'

Turning to face him at last, she could swear he looked scared… No, she wouldn’t fall for it. _She wouldn’t._

He tried again. “Rey, please, you need to listen to me-“

She wanted to, she really did. But she couldn’t. Denying him felt unnatural, but giving in was a betrayal to everything she’d come to believe in.

“Stop it. You chose your life. This has to stop, Kylo.” It hurt to call him that, but she had to accept that’s who he was. Ben Solo would not have chosen the First Order.

“Please! The First Order knows where you are! They’re coming for you! You have to get away!”

Before she could respond to that, the base shuddered, and she was almost thrown to the floor. She turned to look towards the main part of the base, though of course she couldn’t see anything past the bend in the corridor. She can feel what’s going on though, the Force painting a picture. Resistance personnel grabbing weapons and taking up defensive positions, a couple of techs frantically working at the rusted shut back exit that they’d been attempting to open for hours now, in the hope that their efforts would pay off when they needed it, Poe arguing with Leia, trying to get her to hide as if the First Order wouldn’t turn the place upside down looking for her. And outside… transports descending upon the base, landing and disgorging Stormtroopers, TIE fighters swooping overheard looking for anyone trying to escape and firing on the ground covering the roof of the base, and far far above, in the blackness of space above the planet, a star destroyer.

“They’re here!”

“Rey!” She turned to see him reaching for her, looking serious, but all he had a chance to say was, “I-”

And then he was gone.

Getting up, she ran through the corridors towards the entrance, but then skidded to a halt just before reaching the main hall, realising she didn’t actually have a weapon. The lightsaber she was holding was useless (except for maybe throwing at someone, and that wouldn’t be very effective against Stormtrooper armour), and she’d left her staff on the Falcon. She cursed herself for such a stupid mistake. Yes, she’d felt safe with the Resistance, but that was no excuse! She had the Force, but she’d never had to use it during a battle situation before, except to centre herself in her lightsaber duel on Starkiller. Even against Snoke's guards, she'd fallen back on old techniques gained surviving on Jakku, defending herself & her salvage form those who thought they could take what they wanted. She could try hurling stuff at the attacking troops, but she wasn’t sure how effective that’d be, or how long she could keep it up.

Angry at herself for not trying to practice some sort of Force technique that could be used in battle, she threw the broken pieces of the lightsaber aside, just as the doors were blasted inward and troops poured inside. She could see a small group in the hallway up ahead setting up a chokepoint, piling things up to form a barricade. She just had to hope one of them has a spare blaster she can use. Maybe she could use the Force to pull one off a Stormtrooper…

Just then another blast hit the base, blowing in the ceiling nearby and showering the hallway with rubble. A chunk of rock broke off from the ceiling above her, slamming into her temple and knocking her to the floor. The last thing she remembers is wondering if she’ll get to see him again, or if this is where she’ll die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- The condition of the lightsaber is hard to assess in the film (just that you can see the tip of the crystal poking out one half of the hilt) but the novelisation outright states that the crystal has sheared in half, so that's what I'm going with.
> 
> \- I don't know if Black Squadron will make an appearance. I'd like to include them, even if it's just a scene with them getting super drunk in a cantina somewhere trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I'm following their storyline in the Poe Dameron comic (though I'm behind so no spoilers bro) so maybe that will inspire a good way of working them in.
> 
>  
> 
> Next chapter: Kylo Ren is Late to a Party


	3. In Which Kylo Ren is Late to A Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have good news & bad news...
> 
> Good news: I know I said Rose wouldn't show up until chapter 4, but I misspoke - that's her first POV chapter, but she shows up here. So enjoy some Rose a tad earlier than expected.
> 
> Bad news (PLEASE READ AS IT CONCERNS A CHANGE OF WARNING FOR THE FIC!): OK, so I did say warnings & tags might change but even I'm surprised by this. Leia is gonna die. Sorry. I did genuinely want to keep her alive, because I wanted Ben to be able to reconnect with his family, & I didn't want to just kill her off for the sake of it. Also I'd written a bunch of snippets for future scenes where she's in prison & taking the piss out of Hux & I liked how they'd turned out.
> 
> But when I came to write the bit where it's revealed what happened to the survivors of the attack, I realised I was writing an execution scene. I mean there's no way to keep her alive & have the story make sense. I had figured that 'keeping her alive to interrogate her for info' would work, but... What info? The Senate is gone. So is the Resistance. All her family & friends are dead (as far as the First Order knows) so she's kinda useless as a bargaining chip or hostage. And even if I invent some reason, that's gonna change as soon as they figure out that the guy wrecking their shit is Ben Solo, & they're gonna use her as a hostage. Meaning he'd either have to keep going regardless & let her die, or surrender & bring the story to a premature & narratively-unsatisfying ending.
> 
> I'm gonna avoid using the Major Character Death tag though, as even though I've tried to make it clear that Rey is alive, I feel like some people will see that tag, note that in the description I say Ben believes she's dead, & assume the worst. (I can't blame them really - I've definitely avoided fics in the past because they used that warning & it wasn't clear who, & I wasn't in the mood to be bummed out with a tragic ending.) Also since until recently we all assumed Leia was gonna be killed off before Episode 9 & a lot of writers have been trying to stick close to how they imagine things will go, Leia being killed off in fics has probably lost at least some of its shock value.
> 
> EDIT: I've decided to have my cake & eat it by killing Leia off but having her stick around as a Force Ghost. So... yay?

It was only as he came out of hyperspace that he realised things were worse than he thought. There was no sign of a star destroyer, even though he'd definitely come to the right planet, meaning that not only had he missed the attack, but they’d felt the victory was so decisive they hadn’t bothered to stick around for more than a few hours.

He was still having no luck getting in touch with Rey. He tried not to worry. He was sure he’d have felt it if she was dead, right? Wouldn’t he?

Luke had explained what it was like, and it had sounded suitably descriptive. But now that he was thinking about it, his uncle’s words amounted to, “You just _know_ ” and left it at that. And he’d also given dire warnings about the Dark Side and how corrupting it was and how darksiders cut themselves off from compassion and from all that was good, and Kylo had spent years attempting to sever any connection he had to the Light.

He’d sensed his knights being killed, yes, but what if that’s all he could sense? What if he was too much of a monster, too far from the Light, to be able to sense the passing of anyone else? What if you had to be some deeply pure Jedi, fully in tune with the universe, and being a conflicted darksider meant you got left out of the loop on this sort of thing? Maybe one of the spikes of panic he’d felt had been it?

(A night, years ago, standing outside the ruins of a collapsed hut, trying to process what had happened. Waking. A lightsaber. Fear. Betrayal. Anger. Then guilt. Horror. A whisper in his mind: _Look at what you’ve done. They’ll never forgive you for this._ His emotions and senses clashing with each other. Other people coming out of huts, awakened by the noise. Questions. Argument. Comprehension dawning. Confusion turning to anger. _Monster_ , they said. _Murderer_. Trying to explain. Some people believing him, others not. Fire. Death. He hadn’t felt anything from their deaths – not through the Force, anyway. And after all, Luke Skywalker had been alive, and he hadn’t realised. How could he trust his own senses?)

He pushes the memory away.

He was pretty sure he’d felt Han Solo die, but he’d been so shocked he’d actually done it (and a little horrified at himself for what he’d done), and his emotions were all over the place, and Chewie shot him… Had he felt it through the Force? And if he had, how much of the pain that had hit him in that moment had been the Force, and how much was pure grief? Trying to pin down what he’d felt in that moment and ascribe reason to it was like trying to play a game of Pin the Tail on the Happabore while on a ship in freefall.

How much of his confusion and the hollow feeling inside while searching the base on Crait had been regarding Luke’s death? How much was Rey’s rejection? How much was him realising he’d made a huge mistake? Maybe under all that, his sensing of Luke’s passing had been so subtle that he would have missed it otherwise?

No. He had to get a hold of himself. The Dark Side was based around channelling strong emotions, but panic was not one of them. He sought calm, but that wasn’t something he was ever good at (though with the aid of his mask he’d become practiced at seeming composed and in control). He at least managed a state that could be described as ‘moderately stressed’, and since his baseline was ‘mildly stressed’, that was pretty good under these circumstances.

She was alive. He was sure he’d have known if she died. There were perfectly reasonable explanations for her being incommunicado. She might be ignoring him because she was busy enacting some complex escape that required all her concentration, or she might be blaming him for the attack and be refusing to speak to him. She was probably fine. Totally fine. As their not-so-secret weapon, the Resistance would defend her at all costs; even if the base fell, they’d hustle her out a back exit, though she’d likely refuse to leave. Oh, maybe that’s why she wasn’t talking! She’d insisted on staying and someone had knocked her out and dragged her away to make sure she survived. Yes, that was definitely it.

He would thank that person. He wouldn’t envy that person having to deal with an enraged Rey, but he’d thank them, and offer them some bacta to help heal whatever injuries Rey had given them. And possibly suggest they be given a medal for their bravery.

She was absolutely fine.

He thought of trying to reach out to his mother and pushed that thought away. Oh hell no. No way.

He’d have to talk to her eventually if he intended to seek sanctuary with the Resistance, but he was determined to put that off for as long as possible, and she’d have to be the one to speak first; however much he needed her help, he wouldn’t crawl back to her begging.

He was absolutely certain she was fine. She always was.

He flipped the comms back on and tried several First Order channels that he knew of that were used for communicating with TIE squadrons and ground troops, but nothing.

This left him with another problem: Without a looming star destroyer providing a helpful ‘REBEL BASE HERE’ sign, he had no idea where to go. Rey could be down there somewhere, unconscious and grievously wounded and he had no time to search a whole planet.

OK, think, think. What did he know about this planet that might point him in the right direction?

He had been here before, once, with Han and Chewie. But he’d been a child and hadn’t been paying attention. It hadn’t occurred to him that years down the line that the geography of this nowhere planet would be vital information.

After the war had ended, the Rebel Alliance had been required to reveal all their old hiding places, for the sake of transparency and fairness. But his mother had… _forgotten_ … about a few. And his father had known which ones. Which was how Ben had known. They’d stopped here to hastily ditch some cargo bestowed on them by someone who Han swore was an old friend. The man had insisted that the goods were legal, but, in a shocking twist, turned out not to be, and the Falcon had needed a quiet, out-of-the-way place to dump them that was ideally secure or undisturbed enough that the stuff would still be there if Han was able to retrieve them.

Obviously the man had thought Han, as a war hero, would be unlikely to be searched. But the opposite was true - when you’re known throughout the galaxy as ‘the smuggler who married a princess’, customs enforcement agents tend to seize on the first part, no matter how much you insist you’re an honest pilot now.

It had been in a heavily forested area with lots of small hills, and this seemed about right, at least – from what he’d seen of the planet as he’d flown in, much of its landmasses had been mountains and vast grasslands, with trees mostly scattered in small patches. This continent had been the only one that he could see that fit the bill.

Vainly scanning the terrain for anything remotely familiar, he considered how fortunate it was for the Resistance that it had never occurred to him to reveal to his First Order colleagues that he knew the locations of a few old rebel bases. They were all too inconsequential to house the Resistance, and Snoke had never asked, or dredged the information out of his brain.

…Or had he?

He felt himself go cold. What if Snoke _had_ seen this stuff? What if he’d noted this down in some file somewhere, and the First Order had been monitoring the place? What if all of this was his fault? A wave of guilt washed over him. He might have damned Rey before he’d even known her!

Or, no. It could just be an informant noticing suspicious activity. Or perhaps the Empire had known about the place and the First Order had simply inherited the intelligence. Maybe a former rebel had accidentally let slip the base’s location while telling old war stories, assuming this was one of the bases which was public knowledge, and his erstwhile employers had learned of it that way.

He was definitely going to mention all those possibilities to his mother.

He tried the Falcon again, but there was still no response. He didn’t even bother being worried about that. Even assuming the comm system hadn’t been changed and still monitored the exact same channels, it was probably broken.

Just then he sighted a landmark that triggered an echo of a memory. A curved and unevenly-shaped hill that a lonely boy dragged along on one of his father’s adventures, spending time together but still somehow unable to connect, had decided looked like a tooka curled on its side. There were even two small clusters of pine trees that looked like the creature’s ears.

And from there they’d flown… north. Yes, north. And they’d landed a few minutes later. Looking to the north, he could see a low hill that he knew must hide the base.

Much as he was in a desperate hurry to reach the place, it was probably better to land now. Flying into the base on probably the most recognisable TIE fighter in the whole First Order, right after an attack, probably wasn’t a good idea. They might still be a little sore about that ship destroying their entire fleet of X-Wings. While a few minutes could mean the difference between arriving in time to save a severely injured Rey (or one of her friends she would be distraught at losing) and bursting in as people mourn her passing, he wouldn’t be much help to anyone if he got shot out of the sky. OK, that probably wouldn’t happen – between his piloting skills and his Force abilities he’d probably be able to evade easily. But the ensuing fracas would probably not endear him to his potential allies and would delay him more than simply walking in with hands raised. Leaving his mask behind would also be a good idea.

Apparently the Force hadn’t abandoned him yet, despite some of his poor life choices, as coming up ahead he could see the perfect landing spot – a clearing, and beyond that a wide avenue created by trees growing more or less in a couple of straight lines for at least a little way into the woods, with their branches meeting overhead.

He could bring the ship down in the small clearing, and ease into the space as far as he could get. If the First Order came back to do another sweep of the area, they wouldn't see it and know he was here. And if the Resistance had had all their ships destroyed or damaged, his Silencer might be the only way out of here for him and Rey.

He pulled himself up and out of the ship as soon as he’d landed, dropping to the forest floor, and running in the direction of the base as fast as he could. Maybe he was in time. Maybe the First Order had decided to hold off the attack until after they’d sorted out who exactly was Supreme Leader, and that force that had sent her almost crashing to the floor had been from part of the base falling down due to shoddy construction techniques, rather than bombardment. Maybe the Resistance had somehow won, using the First Order’s overconfidence and the help of the planet’s natives and their superior knowledge of the terrain, like the Rebel Alliance had at the Battle of Endor, and somehow caused the Star Destroyer to crash. Maybe the First Order had taken one look at the what was left of the Resistance and gone, ‘Look, we might be soulless monsters who steal children to brainwash into fighting for us, but even we can’t be that cruel.’

But no. As he ran out of the trees, he was greeted with destroyed doors and scattered white-armoured corpses. Frantically he ran into the base, desperately seeking any sign of life. Preferably Rey, obviously. But he’d settle for anyone who could tell him where she was.

He refused to admit to himself that he was also looking for any sign of his mother, or Chewie.

Reaching out with the Force, he could sense nothing around him aside from small animals. This was a place of the dead, and if Rey was still here, he was too late.

It took a depressingly short time to check the bodies, as they were all helpfully clustered together in groups, the Resistance having used the network of corridors to their advantage, setting up choke points to pin down advancing Stormtroopers, though the back exit they seemed to have been defending showed no signs of having been opened in years, suggesting their sacrifice might have been in vain.

Rey wasn’t there. Nor was his mother, or Chewie. There was also no sign of Dameron, or the former stormtrooper FN-2187. Had they escaped?

There was a possibility their bodies lay hidden away in the maze of passages, having run from the main fight and sought to hide, but he found it hard to believe any of those people would have cowered away from a battle like that. Especially not when hiding was so obviously futile. Was the apparent back exit a ruse?

Still unable to reach Rey, desperation finally caused him to reach out with the Force and follow another connection. His mother was there! He almost wept with relief, but still couldn’t bring himself to talk to her. She was alive. People had survived and they were out there somewhere. Things were fine.

He stepped over a body horribly burned by blaster fire. Well, fine-ish.

Walking back towards the entrance, beginning, daring to feel hope, his eyes caught on something shiny, glinting in the dim light.

It was two halves of the Skywalker lightsaber.

The small flame of hope guttered and died. She wouldn’t have left this behind.

He reached out for Rey again, and couldn’t touch her, but realised now that this was different from before, when she’d been blocking him. Instead of vaguely sensing her as if in another room in a large house, it was like she had vanished from his senses entirely. The thread tying him to her led to nothing.

He collapsed to his knees, looking down at the broken lightsaber.

He didn’t know how long he knelt there, trying to process this, refusing to accept it. He forgot about everything else. The galaxy might as well have not existed.

So he was startled when someone hurtled up behind him, apparently out of nowhere. He leapt to his feet and whirled round to face the intruder. She seemed just as shocked as he was but had the presence of mind to draw her blaster and point it at him. Not in the mood to fight a random stranger - not without cause anyway - he raised his hands.

It was obvious immediately, even to his stunned mind, still trying to process the idea of a universe without Rey in it, that this woman was Resistance. She had that scrappy look they all seemed to have, and she looked way too affected to simply be a local investigating some explosions.

He stared at her, unable to react beyond his automatic gesture of surrender. It didn’t even occur to him to try to Pull the weapon out of her hand. This woman, probably a hardened Resistance commando judging by battle wounds visible on her face and the fierce determination in her eyes, would shoot him in the face without question the moment he gave a reason. He tried to get his tongue to work, to say something, but he couldn’t think of what. His mind was filled with Rey – or rather the absence of her. A void that left him unable to do anything or even think properly.

Evidently not so paralysed, she broke the silence. “Why are you here? Are you with the First Order? Who are you?”

Three fairly simple questions that should have been easy to answer, even as stupefied as he was, but as he opened his mouth to answer, he realised that they were surprisingly complicated. Why was he here? He’d had reasons, good ones, but they felt like they were from some distant past that had long ago passed into irrelevance. He’d wanted to surrender to them and ask for shelter, but there was nobody to surrender to and no-one to shelter him. He’d wanted to help them fight, but the fight had been and gone. He’d wanted to protect Rey, but he’d failed.

Was he with the First Order? Technically no, but a few hours ago he’d been Supreme Leader, and the Resistance had probably used holos of him in target practice sessions, so she probably wouldn’t take his recent and rather spectacular firing as reason to accept him.

And who was he? Even he didn’t know. Perhaps Rey might have – she’d called him Ben with such surety, like she had faith in him, more than anyone else ever had. And she’d been wrong. He’d failed her at every turn.

He broke, then, the last threads holding him together snapping. He fell back to his knees and picked up the pieces of the broken lightsaber. “I’m too late. She’s dead. Rey is dead. I tried to get here in time to warn them, but I failed.”

He never sensed her moving, but the next thing he knew, she was beside him, a hand resting on his shoulder. She was silent for a long moment, and even as distracted as he was, he could feel a wave of shock and grief that echoed his own.

“I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t help to say it, but I know you tried your best.”

A spark of anger flared within him. Once he would have leapt up and slashed everything within reach of his lightsaber until he had run out of things to destroy. But he was so exhausted he was far beyond the point of needing to let anger flow through him until he stopped feeling. He let it drift away.

“Then why say it, if you know it doesn’t help?”

“Because it’s still true.”

Another long silence that stretched out, but also lasted only an instant.

“I should have been here to help.” Looking beyond the broken lightsaber, he saw the bag she’d been carrying lying on the ground, its contents spilling out. Ration packets, machine parts, a handful of credits; she’d been out gathering supplies.

“Would you alone have turned the tide?” A nicer person would have made the effort to soften the bite in their words to someone who had just offered comfort.

“I guess we’ll never know.”

Another pause, but this time the intense grief filling him had faded slightly to a profound but dull ache, and he was aware enough to sense that she was looking around.

“Where-” She gulped. “Where is she?” He knew she meant Rey.

He shook his head, though whether to express a negative answer, or in an attempt to clear the fog that still settling on it, or both, he had no idea. “I don’t know.”

“Then how do you know she’s dead?”

“I can no longer sense her in the Force.”

He could feel her surprise, and curiosity. Of course. The Resistance had searched so desperately for Luke, and celebrated Rey, so the appearance of another Force user out of nowhere was confusing and suspicious. He had about 5 seconds before she remembered there was at least one other Force user in the galaxy and arrived at the obvious conclusion of who he must be.

“Who are you?” she murmured, repeating her question from earlier, apparently without realising it.

Taking a deep breath, he attempted a reply that would not get him shot (Though really, why did it matter? _Rey was dead and it was his fault._ ) “My name is…” _Shit. What did he say? Should he tell the truth, or make something up? And what was the truth? Who was he, anyway?_ “My name is Ben Solo.”

It occurred to him then that he had no actual damn idea what the Resistance knew about their leader’s erstwhile son. He’d spent most of the last few years drifting around the Unknown Regions and the far edges of the Outer Rim, training under Snoke and searching for clues as to his uncle’s whereabouts. He was seriously out of the galactic loop. He was aware of his mother’s activities thanks to briefings on Resistance activity, which had given him the false impression that he knew everything about what his mother was up to. Yet really all that amounted to was reports of the Resistance’s efforts at recruitment and acquisition, padded with lots of speculation, while leaving a lot out. He'd found out his parents were separated from an intelligence update and hadn’t been able to come up with a good excuse for asking if the spy who’d provided the snippet knew the reason. Had it been his fault somehow? (Like it always was…)

Since Snoke had kept his identity secret within the First Order, he had no idea if the lack of reference to the fate of Ben Solo and the end of the Jedi Academy was down to censorship or the fact that the information wasn’t there to start with.

Did she know her precious brother, the one she so desperately searched for, had tried to murder him? Had she been angry, or felt he’d been right to cut down the child she’d seen as a monster? Had Han known? Had the two of them disagreed and that’s why he’d left? Was that why he’d been so desperate to reach out? (And look where that had got him…)

And what had either of them, or the families of Luke’s students, told anybody else? Did the galaxy view him as a butcher who had cut down innocents? (It had been nothing like that of course, but there was no version of the story in others’ eyes where he was the hero…) Had an ashamed Leia pretended her son was one of the slain? (Would she have preferred it if he had been?) Perhaps it had all been hushed up, explained away as some tragic accident?

And even if the galaxy as a whole knew nothing of Ben Solo, surely the Resistance knew everything? They probably had files upon files detailing his dark deeds in the name of the First Order, padded with incidents from his childhood to explain how he’d gone so wrong.

He found he didn’t care. Rey was dead. His mother was gone, who knew where. (Like always.) His father was dead. The people who had chosen to follow him on that fateful night at the temple were dead. And he had nothing to show for it. All the work, all the sacrifices, and where had it all gotten him?

He doesn’t have the energy to even move his head to look at her, but he can feel her shock, but more ‘I just won the Galactic Lottery’ shock, rather than ‘my greatest enemy is right next to me and I can’t process this horrific turn of events’ shock.

He waited for the metaphorical hammer to fall, because surely she’d work it out, but it didn’t come. Instead, after a pause that seemed to go on for years, he sensed her amazement morphing into resolve. She tightened her hand on his shoulder. (He hadn’t realised it was still there.) “My name is Rose. Come on. We should go to the Falcon. It’s probably still there – we put enough effort into hiding it. And if anyone did manage to escape, that’s where they’d have gone.”

The lightsaber pieces fell from his hands as a fresh wave of grief and pain engulfed him. The Millennium Falcon. That heap of barely-spaceworthy scrap.

His father’s ship.

Except that it wasn’t now, was it? It was his.

( _“One day, kid, this thing will be yours. Don’t look at me like that – I know what you’re thinking. But she’s been flying this long despite everyone thinking she’s about to fall apart, and I know you’ll treat her right.”_ )

But it would never truly belong to him. Not ever.

Privately, he didn’t think the Falcon was still here. He didn’t have to put forth any effort to sense that Leia Organa was nowhere near here, meaning she had fled, leaving Rey to die, her body probably buried under rubble. (He gave a brief thought to moving collapsed rock to find what was left of her but abandoned the thought before it was even fully formed. While giving her a Jedi funeral on a pyre would be important, he couldn’t bring himself to face what ruin her body was almost certainly in.)

But his companion - Rose - is on her feet, having gathered up her bag of supplies while he’d been distracted. She pulled him to his feet and dragged him after her toward the door, and he just let her.

He came back to himself a little once they get outside, enough to pull his arm free, though he still followed her because… well, what else was he going to do?

They didn’t say anything as they trudged through the forest. They walked for some distance - or at least it felt that way - which explained her initially-foolish-seeming hope that it would have remained undiscovered. He could sense she was beginning to tire, but she showed no signs of wanting to stop and even as clueless as he is at dealing with other people, he knew better than to offer to help.

It wasn’t long before he could see where they were heading – a huge rocky crag in the distance that towered over the otherwise gentle landscape, or perhaps the hill next to it. Is the ship on top of it? How did the First Order miss that? But as they approached, he saw the large gap at the bottom and understood.

Chewie, and whoever had piloted it with him (he thinks: Rey) had used the same technique that he had to hide his Silencer, flying into the large gap at the base to remain hidden from overhead. The hill next to the ridge was slightly curved around it, making it even harder to spot.

It would be spotted in an instant by an alert TIE pilot doing a proper search, but that would require them to be deployed here in the first place, far enough from the base that it seemed pointless to search.

It had probably been built in mind for X-Wings, bombers, and maybe smaller cruisers, but was just enough to accommodate the surprisingly-nimble YT freighter.

To his shock - and probably hers too - the ship was still there.

They approached slowly, wary. He doesn’t know what to make of finding the ship here and intact (seemingly, anyway – it _was_ the Falcon). It’s good that it’s still here, but… he has a bad feeling about it.

His mother must have got away through other means.

An orange and white BB droid rolls down the ramp, beeping frantically. _Hey look, Hux. I finally found it._

<<Explosions detected! No word from base! Stayed here in case needed. What has occurred?>>

Even as it came to a halt in front of them, it continued to shift to and fro, fidgeting nervously as it awaited news. Were droids capable of actual hope? He knew Threepio was more than capable of the opposite.

He paid scant attention as Rose knelt down, patted it comfortingly and explained what had happened, instead looking towards the Falcon, dread starting to properly creep in. Even after he’d felt he’d lost all hope after losing Rey, it turned out that there’d still been a last little piece flickering with a dim light, and now that any vague hope of other survivors melted away it was snuffed out. If anyone else had come here, the droid wouldn’t be so desperate for news. He stretched out his senses anyway (maybe there was a tech in there doing repairs, too buried in circuitry to notice the commotion in the distance… maybe Chewie was inside, ready and waiting for survivors…) but sensed nothing. Well, not quite nothing – there was life, but the signatures were smaller and represented non-sentient life. A couple of pet tookas perhaps? Local wildlife that had wandered in from the woods? Whatever it was, it probably wasn’t going to be much help sheltering him from the First Order.

His ears picked up, “This is General Organa’s son Ben.” At this the droid tilted its head suspiciously, obviously wondering why it had never encountered a son before. “He’s here to help.”

<<Ben has clearly helped very much.>>

He glared at the droid, even though it was a pretty fair assessment of both today in particular and his whole life in general, and Rose jumped in to defend him. “Hey, he tried to get here in time to warn everyone about the attack. He tried, OK.”

The small droid beeped an apology, and he nodded stiffly, not very good at diplomacy. He’d always left that to other people. He was usually the person who got sent in when you didn’t care about being diplomatic.

Rose got to her feet, biting off a groan and staggering as she did so, swaying dangerously. He automatically reached out and held her steady with the Force, and her eyes widened as she realised what he was doing, before she smiled in appreciation.

Slightly embarrassed and not sure how to handle the unfamiliar situation of someone being grateful to him, he cleared his throat. “We should probably get on board. Start thinking about what to do next.”

Really, what did it matter what he did next? But sooner or later all of this was going to hit him and the faint numbness would give over to who-knew-what. He couldn’t decide if the Falcon was the worst place to ponder his grief or the best, but its familiarity might do something to break through the numbing fog, or distract him in some way.

Stepping onboard, he felt simultaneously attacked and welcomed, the old familiarity triggering childhood memories of a time long past, a life he’d walked away from. The ship seemed exactly the same, but also so much smaller than he remembered it.

Entering the main hold, his spirits momentarily lifted as he saw a familiar droid. “Artoo!”

…then he remembered the last time they’d seen each other.

Ah. Things were about to get very awkward.

Any shreds of comfort he’d picked up from Rose’s attempts at support and from being back on the Falcon dissipated in an instant.

Somewhere under the cloud of depression that has settled over his brain, he knew he was about to face Consequences.

Artoo zoomed across the room letting out shrill, angry beeps, barging objects aside like a small battering ram. He should fall flat on his faceplate but somehow doesn’t.

It was impossible to make out what the droid was saying. While he had an excellent grasp of binary, Artoo’s beeping was incoherent, though what he could make out would make a Hutt blush. Really though, it didn’t take a genius to figure out the gist.

Despite their size difference and his usually intimidating presence, he found himself backed up against the wall as Artoo beeped and wailed his anger.

“Look, I know I may have made some poor choices, but…”

Angrily, the astromech produced some tool from a compartment and zapped him in the leg. It would probably have been enough to drop most people, but Kylo Ren was not most people, and his only reaction was to roll his eyes theatrically.

“I’ve spent the past few years working for someone who thought blasting me with lightning whenever I so much as breathed wrong - and I’m not even slightly exaggerating about that - was excellent fun. You’ll have to try harder than that.”

Artoo retracted the electrified tool and instead produced a rotating saw blade. “OK, maybe that was a mistake…”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Rose forced herself between them, and Artoo withdrew the blade to avoid harming the woman. “What the hell is going on?”

There was a long pause, in which man and droid looked at each other, then at her, and then back at each other.

“Um, so do you have any idea where I’ve been for the last few years?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing about Ben's feelings toward his family: fine  
> Writing about Ben's grief at losing Rey: so sad but i know she's alive so ok  
> Writing about Ben's feelings toward the Millennium Falcon: *sobbing*
> 
>  
> 
> Next chapter: Rose Goes on A Shopping Trip


	4. In Which Rose Goes On A Shopping Trip

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I must admit, I'm not entirely happy with the second half of this chapter. But there isn't really any way around the fact that there needs to be a large infodump of stuff that readers already know, because one of the characters doesn't know any of it, & I can't skip it because it's a crucial part of them interacting & because her reactions are part of her learning to trust him. I've summarised as best I could, but it still feels a little clunky to me. Hopefully that's just down to frustration from spending so much time trying to make it work & it reads fine to everyone else.

Rose hadn't wanted to go on this supply run, but the old rebel base they'd holed up in needed a lot of work to make it even close to habitable.

Barely recovered from her injuries, she was not up to the task of hauling equipment or wrestling with machinery practically welded together from disuse, and someone needed to head over to the nearest settlement to obtain anything even remotely useful. The terrain looked easy, with the worst obstacles being gently sloping hills, and the climate was mild, and the general consensus amongst the remaining Resistance members with any kind of medical training was that a bit of fresh air couldn't hurt.

So she was handed the Resistance's sole remaining comlink - at least until someone managed to fix the comms in the base - and told to contact the Falcon if there was any sign the First Order was looking for them here, or if she felt so much as a twinge (this last bit had come from Finn).

They needed anything they could get their hands on, and since nobody wanted to send the Falcon away (what with it being their only escape if the First Order caught up with them), it needed to be done locally and on foot. So Rose was given a bag, and loaded up with any tradeable goods people could scrounge together - credits, jewellery, small trinkets that might be considered exotic goods by untraveled yokels, someone had even thrown in a packet of spice (there'd been a slight disapproving look from General Organa at that, but she knew better than to turn up her nose at something with any kind of value) - and a wishlist of items that were most needed, though the saying about beggars not affording to be choosers definitely applied here, and the list might as well have consisted of 'a moon on a stick, a herd of fathiers, and an unlimited supply of coaxium'.

Rey had even taken her aside and asked her to look out for any kyber crystals, unsure if she could get the one in her broken lightsaber to work again. It wasn't completely ridiculous - plenty of non-Force sensitive people had been known to incorporate them into jewellery in a desire to show faith in the Force, especially during the dark days of the Empire. And like any crystal, there was a possibility of one being found and passed around by people who didn't know what it was, sold by some trader as a shiny bauble, bought by someone as a gift for a lover, discarded by someone unaware of its true value, picked up and traded again...

But still, you didn't need to be a Jedi to sense the desperation. She hoped her friend could get the thing working again. Surely she could? Rose didn't know anything about lightsabers, but Rey had only asked about a replacement crystal, which had to mean that anything else she might need could be easily scavenged.

And even the crystal being broken didn't mean it couldn't work. Someone had told her that Kylo Ren's lightsaber flickered and sputtered like fire, and that it did so because the crystal was damaged in some way.

She shuddered and touched her pendant in an instinctive gesture to ward off bad luck, though she knew better than to think it would really help.

It would be kind of weird if she ended up with a lightsaber like his, but at least it would work. And if it worked, then Rey could kill him with it.

If she knew anything, it's that the galaxy needed that man dead.

*****

The settlement hadn't been quite the dismal prospect she'd expected. Sure, it was hardly Coruscant, but it was a decent size and seemed prosperous as towns went. Whatever the local economy was based around, it was booming.

She was smart enough to circle round the place so she appeared to arrive from the nearby spaceport (OK, so it was really just a field with a fence around it and some control towers, but it _was_ a pretty large field and the control towers didn't look like they were originally built for something else, which was actually cutting edge for small towns on outer rim planets), so as not to tip anyone off that the old base was in use. She doubted this place was seething with First Order spies, but there was always some asshole whose desire for credits outweighed their sense of honour and decency. All it took was said asshole seeing a reward notice and remembering the strange woman in overalls walking out of the woods from the direction of a place that just happened to be an old rebellion hideout and that was it. No way was she going to be the one who went down in history as the person who had doomed the Resistance.

The place was the perfect sweet spot for Resistance supply acquisition: prosperous enough that she could pick up some specialist machine parts and power supplies that would really help with repairs (even Rey could admit that scavenging could only get you so far most of the time), but quiet enough that the cheap trinkets she’d brought were viewed as exotic goods deserving of curiosity.

She'd even managed to trade the spice, affecting as tough a demeanour as she could, and passing it off to a sketchy looking guy in an alley who reminded her way too much of DJ. She didn't know much about the market value of intoxicants, but she felt she got a good price.

She'd spend those credits another day though. She'd been gone long enough, had a much better haul than anyone had expected - no kyber crystals for Rey though - and it probably wasn't a good idea to linger after the spice exchange in case word got around and either local law enforcement or whatever passed for the criminal underworld in these parts started looking for her.

Someone could come back another day to get anything else. It wasn’t like they were going anywhere, after all.

*****

Despite her initial reluctance, she was glad she hadn't tried to wriggle out of this trip like she'd wanted to.

The walk really had helped lift her spirits a little, and had even helped ease a lot of the lingering aches from her injuries. And walking through the woods like this was so nice. She'd grown up on a mining colony stripped of much of its vegetation, and her work with the Resistance had kept her too busy to properly appreciate any of the nature surrounding the base except from a distance.

Though, you could have too much of a good thing, and her battered body was starting to protest at so much walking and standing around and doing things, so she took things even slower than she had on the outward journey, and sat down whenever she started feeling faint. It was pleasant, and peaceful, and it felt good to pause like this, to take a breath before going back to the hard work of saving the galaxy.

She just wished Paige could be here with her to enjoy it too.

She fought back the tears that threatened to come. Maybe she was here. In the Force. That was how it worked, right? She wasn't sure. Maybe Rey would know, or there was something in those ancient books Rose had seen her looking through. She would ask her when she got back.

A strange avian creature that looked like a cross between a bird and a lizard landed on a branch near her and trilled a little song while eyeing her curiously, before flying off again.

Yes, she really hoped Paige was in these woods with her.

She walked along, imagining Paige's spirit flying with the lizard-birds in the mid-afternoon sunlight, and the pleasant feeling returned, though tinged with sadness.

Then she stumbled into a TIE fighter, just sitting there in the middle of the woods, and her happiness vanished in an instant.

*****

Ducking back behind a bush, she peered carefully through the leaves. The TIE was in a slight dip in the ground, so she had a decent vantage point of the crash site. The most obvious thing she could see was that this wasn't a regular TIE. It had a longer cockpit, and the wing panels tapered to points, similar to the old Interceptor model.

It was also clearly a recent arrival, traces of warmth still coming off the engines, and the disturbed soil from its landing looked fresh to her. Looking toward the direction it had come from, she could see no broken branches or damage to the trees, suggesting that the pilot had been skilled enough to slip right between them. Whoever they were, they were good.

But her initial terror waned slightly as she noted that as far as she could see, there were no smoking holes or damage that suggested that the thing had been shot down and crash-landed during a pitched battle against the Millennium Falcon as it strove to defend the Resistance base.

That didn't mean things were great - an experimental First Order starfighter flown by a highly skilled pilot smelled a lot like a recon mission. But it was also possible this was a coincidence - a lost TIE test pilot bringing their ship in for an emergency landing in what for all they knew was uninhabited woodland, opting to keep it hidden so as not to expose First Order secrets. Nothing to be concerned about... Yeah right. Like they were that lucky.

She moved to pull the comlink out of her bag to contact the base, but then changed her mind. She couldn't properly see into the cockpit from where she was crouching. The pilot could still be in there, waiting for rescue, or perhaps injured and resting to allow for first aid to do its work. Or they could've left the ship to stretch their legs, and even now be creeping up behind her... She whirled round, but there was nobody there.

Instead of the comlink she drew the blaster she'd been given, setting it to stun after a moment's thought. Much as she wanted to take down anyone who worked for the monsters who’d destroyed her home, shooting this pilot dead wouldn’t help them figure out if the First Order was on their way.

She closed her eyes, counted to ten, steadying her breathing... And then flung herself out of the bushes, skidding around the front of the wing, approached the cockpit, blaster raised and ready...

There was no-one there.

She slumped, deflated after the adrenaline rush, not sure if she was feeling relief or disappointment. Taking on an elite TIE pilot with an old blaster that she thought might actually disintegrate if she tried to fire it wasn't a fun prospect, but they could have been a valuable source of information.

Then she saw the footprints and her blood froze. They were barely noticeable, and she'd only spotted them because she was leaning down.

And they were heading in the direction of the base.

She ran, not caring if she aggravated her injuries, not caring that there was a TIE pilot lurking in these woods, maybe spying on the base while awaiting backup, and ready to take down anyone who crossed their path.

All she cared about was warning her friends. There was no point using the comlink. All she could do with that was contact the Falcon, which was parked away from the base. Whoever received her message would still need to run to the base. And that’s if someone was even on the ship. The comlink was for if she noticed suspicious activity which suggested the First Order was looking for them here. A TIE fighter landed near the base was suspicious. A TIE fighter landed near the base whose pilot had set off straight toward the base was serious.

There was still time, she was certain of it. The ship had landed so recently she must have been already on her way back when it arrived. And while she may have missed a landing by a small craft operated by a pilot skilled enough to bring their ship down carefully, there was no way she would have missed a battle. In town? Maybe. There were crowds of people, noise, buildings, and she'd been busy. But in the woods? Looking in the direction of the base? No way.

However small the Resistance's numbers now were, the First Order would come down so hard when it found them that it would redefine the meaning of the term 'overkill'. There would be a dreadnaught hovering overhead, a whole fleet of TIE fighters, walkers, as many stormtroopers as they could cram into any shuttles they had available for immediate launch...

Or maybe it really was a lost ship, the pilot was simply trying to find civilisation and after initially walking in the wrong direction had eventually realised they were going the wrong way and turned around and headed towards town, and the First Order had no idea where they were, and she was going to feel like a dumbass for being so worr-

She burst out of the trees surrounding the base and stopped. 

The large doors were torn open, scarred by blasterfire and with a huge hole ripped in them. Bodies lay scattered about; it wasn’t much consolation that most were stormtroopers.

She ran inside, not even considering that there might still be First Order troops around. No blasterfire or alerts from sentries greeted her however. Just silence.

There were more bodies inside, mostly concentrated at the entrance to the passages leading off into the base. It looked like they’d made the First Order fight for every inch. Had the enemy’s superior numbers won out eventually though? Or had a small, brave group of Resistance troops managed to delay enough to allow the rest to escape?

She tried not to think about Paige’s sacrifice, and how it was looking more and more futile by the day.

She didn’t want to look at the bodies, but she had to know. Who else had they lost?

She saw people she knew. Of course she did. The Resistance had dwindled so much that she was no longer cut off from the heart of the Resistance by pipework and machine parts, known only to Paige and her crew and the other techs, only vaguely aware of people like Poe Dameron or Prin- General Organa. Heroes and legends that she saw from a distance. But not anymore. Now she was right there with them.

Only she hadn’t been. Not when it really mattered.

There didn’t seem to be that many Resistance dead - not from the entrance anyway - but there weren’t that many people left to start with, so even losing one person was a further blow to stopping the First Order.

She was terrified that each new body would be Finn’s, but each time she was relieved to find it was someone else, and then ashamed at her relief.

And then she rounded a corner into a passageway partially blocked by rubble and dead stormtroopers, and there was a man crouching, looking at something on the floor. He whirled round and to his feet, clearly as surprised as she was.

She pointed her blaster at him, and he raised his hands.

He didn’t _look_ First Order – she knew way more about their dress codes than she had a few weeks ago, and he wasn’t wearing anything that resembled one of their uniforms. He was dressed in a long black coat, with a cowl or scarf around his shoulders, both in a sturdy, practical fabric. A blaster hung from a holster at his hip, and something else was attached to a wide belt cinching the coat closed, though she couldn’t see it properly in the light. A scar curved down one side of his face, just missing his eye.

He _was_ wearing knee-high black boots, but it wasn’t as if that was a sartorial choice exclusive to militaries. And that hair cut would never be acceptable for even the most lax military force. Except for maybe the Resistance, but it wasn’t like they could afford to be choosy. Besides, according to the First Order and their supporters, the Resistance was a terrorist organisation anyway, not a proper military. There was that scar, but hey, it was a dangerous galaxy out there – lots of people had scars.

And he wasn’t making a move to attack her, or even evaluating her, looking for a weakness he could exploit. In fact, he looked as shocked and stunned as she felt.

So, he was highly unlikely to be First Order. Still, strange guy dressed in black lurking in a Resistance base in the aftermath of a raid? It didn’t look good.

The adrenaline that had carried her to the base has started to wear off and she feels like she has been trampled by fathiers. She hopes it doesn’t show.

There was a long moment of silence. Rose figured it was up to her to break it – she was the one holding the blaster after all, and she was reasonably sure that was how it worked.

“Why are you here? Are you with the First Order? Who are you?”

She winced internally (at least, she hoped she managed to keep it off her face) at the random order she’d thrown out her questions in, the words stumbling over each other so much she was amazed she hadn’t come out with, ‘Are you here? Why is the First Order? Who?’. Master interrogator she was not.

She expected some hesitation as he tried to process her attempted interrogation and formulate a response that was hopefully more coherent. But… it was like he shut down, staring past her with despair in his eyes.

Next thing she knew, he’d collapsed to his knees, picking up the item he’d been looking at on the ground and staring at it like it’s a hand of sabacc cards that he’d gambled everything he owned on and lost. She saw it was the pieces of Rey’s broken lightsaber, and the despair hit her so hard it’s almost like a punch to the gut. Rey. _Her friend._

“I’m too late. She’s dead. Rey is dead. I tried to get here to warn them, but I failed.”

She dropped her blaster and bag and went to him, crouching beside him and resting a hand on his shoulder. Whoever he was, if he was a friend of Rey’s, he was a friend of hers. She doesn’t really know if she’s capable of comforting him, especially now, with her grief as strong as his, but she can’t leave him to flounder. That wouldn’t be right.

She dithered for a moment or two about whether she should just leave him to cry himself out while patting him reassuringly, or if she should attempt a pep talk. She’s always tried to stay positive, even in the darkest times, and the latter wins out.

“I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t help to say it, but I know you tried your best.”

He didn’t look up, but she could feel his annoyance. “Then why say it, if you know it won’t help.”

Because I’m trying to get myself to understand that. Because Finn is probably dead and I wasn’t with him at the end. “Because it’s still true.”

She looked around at the destruction, and noticed an arm, poking out of some rubble, tattooed with a picture of a doll with Elhar written underneath it. The man had been a shopkeeper, until the First Order had attacked, killing his family and forcing him to work in a factory making munitions. He’d managed to escape, got his daughter’s favourite toy inked on his skin, and joined up with the Resistance.

He’d been so nice to her, teaching her to play dejarik (even letting her win a few times), and they’d talked about the families they’d lost. He’d nodded towards Finn. “You keep that one close, girlie. Ya hear me? Got yerself a good man there, that ya have.”

“I should have been here to help.” She didn’t realise she’d spoken the words out loud until he moved his head, looking towards her.

“Would you alone have turned the tide?”

She hated that he was probably right. Leia. Rey. Poe. All three of those people had seemed like an unstoppable army on their own, and they’d all been here. So had other people who she’d worshipped as heroes, even after getting to know them better and learning that legends don’t tell the whole story. People like Finn.

“I guess we’ll never know.”

Curiosity overcame her. She hadn’t seen Rey’s body on her frantic dash between the entrance and here, where she’d left her broken weapon, and surely she’d have fallen somewhere along there…? (Unless she’d run… No. She wouldn’t have run, Rose might barely know the Jedi but she knew that much.) But he seemed pretty sure she was dead…

“Where-” Her voice stopped working, and she had to swallow and try again. “Where is she?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

She blinked at that, confused. “Then how do you know she’s dead.” (She might be alive after all! She _must_ be alive! And if she was then Finn would be fine because they’d look out for each other!)

He closed his eyes, as if gathering himself. “I can no longer sense her in the Force.”

The wave of shock that washed over her was so intense it pushed aside her pain for a moment. _He’s Force sensitive?_

She wanted to ask where he’d even been when the Resistance had needed him. But it would be insensitive to raise that point at a time like this. And he was probably on some super secret mission or something, and everyone who was anyone in the Resistance had known.

Before the Resistance had had to flee D’Qar, she’d usually only find out about missions before they happened if Paige had been involved or knew someone who was, or if she’d been asked to help the ground crews prep the ship. Otherwise she’d notice certain ships missing or certain faces absent from the mess hall, and maybe there’d be a new shipment of munitions that would show up shortly after or a group of returning pilots hollering and high-fiving each other that she could connect those to. And that had been when she was actually there – while she’d been stationed on Refnu she’d received news via gossip from comm techs and the occasional fighter sent to bolster their numbers.

Information in the Resistance had gone from ‘need to know only’ to ‘everyone needs to know’ overnight, and she was suddenly finding out things that everyone else took for granted and assumed she knew too. At least Finn and Rey were even more in the dark than her, which had made her feel a little less lost amongst all these brave heroes.

Now, the heroes were gone, and she was more lost than ever.

“Who are you?” It was a legitimate question, but she still hadn’t meant to express her curiosity out loud and so abruptly, though at least she’d come out with that rather than, ‘Where the kriff have you been?’

“My name is…” He paused there, apparently still too overcome with grief to talk properly. “My name is Ben Solo.”

If she thought her shock at finding out he was Force sensitive was intense, this was on a whole new level.

Where had he been? Why had Leia never mentioned him? She’d heard she’d had a son, but he wasn’t around and no-one ever mentioned him. Rose had just assumed that Leia was yet another of the many, many people who’d lost a loved one to the First Order.

But here he was, alive. Where had he been? Why had nobody brought it up at one of the meetings on the Falcon where they’d been taking stock of their resources (the meetings had been depressingly short and involved a lot of repetition)? She mentally (perhaps physically too – it was hard to keep track of herself) shook herself. Obviously he was part of this fight if he’d been tipped off about an imminent attack, so he must have been doing something important. Probably everybody in charge had known, and he had been discussed extensively in one of those early meetings when she’d still been either unconscious or high as a space station on painkillers.

Her body protested at the awkward crouch she’d positioned herself in, exacerbating her still-healing injuries, and she realised how exhausted she was. The temptation to sit down where she was lasted about 0.5 of a second; she doesn’t want to stay here surrounded by the bodies of her friends.

If she stays here too long, she’s not sure she’ll have the strength to leave.

But where to? The Falcon seemed like the obvious place. Assuming the First Order hadn’t found it and blasted it into smithereens. And assuming some lucky survivors of the attack hadn’t taken it. (Please let someone have taken it. Even if it showed how little they thought of her that she’d been forgotten.)

Still, it’s a goal to work towards, a place to go that is somewhere other than here.

Decision made, she got to her feet, using her hand on his shoulder as leverage (she should feel bad, but he doesn’t seem to notice – either because he’s so solidly built, or is too distracted, or both), biting off a groan as the movement pulled at her wounds. Another reason to go to the Falcon: The medical supplies were all on there.

He was still kneeling there, looking down at the broken lightsaber in his hands. She needed to get him moving. Oh, wait, and introduce herself. Shock or not, her mother would never have let that lapse of manners pass.

“My name is Rose. Come on. We should go to the Falcon. It’s probably still there – we put enough effort into hiding it. And if anyone did manage to escape, that’s where they’d have gone.”

She’d added that last bit in the hope that it’d give him some hope, remind him that there was always still a chance. But it just seemed to make things worse. He’d seemed more and more distraught as she’d been speaking, dropping the broken hilt as if he didn’t have the strength to hold it anymore.

Giving him a moment to process his grief, she worked on gathering up the stuff she’d dropped, slotting her blaster back in its holster and scooping everything back into her bag from where it had spilled out (she’d been off gathering this junk while her friends were being killed – like hell was she leaving it behind, however useless it all seemed now). She threw the lightsaber into the bag as well. Even if it was broken beyond repair, it seemed wrong to leave it. She expected Ben to protest, but he didn’t seem to notice.

She was packed and ready, but he still hadn’t moved. She was sympathetic, and under any circumstances would have let him stay there for as long as he needed, but they had to get moving.

“C’mon,” she muttered, pulling him to his feet. By rights she shouldn’t have been able to – he’s huge and she’s injured – but he rose easily, letting himself be pulled up. At least his mental state conferred some advantages.

She dragged him behind her, out of the front doors and into the sunlight (Why was the sun still shining? How?), and he seemed to wake up a little, enough to pull his arm free.

It was quite a walk to the rocky hill with a convenient overhang and equally convenient cave system (though she suspected the natural features had had some artificial help), but the inconvenience of the distance was outweighed by the security of keeping things separate, which was hopefully about to pay off big time.

She was exhausted and her barely-healed wounds were really starting to hurt, but she refused to stop. As she walked along she tried to think of contingency plans. What if the Falcon had been destroyed? (Possibly.) What if survivors had already flown off in it? (Hopefully.) What if it was there but didn’t work? (Highly likely.)

All huge worries.

Then she remembered the abandoned TIE Fighter. It probably wasn’t in full working order – it must have been ditched due to mechanical failure (why else would it still be there?) and the pilot was long gone, leaving on another ship with the rest of the First Order – but it was probably fixable (though it wasn’t an ideal vehicle for two people), and if not they could strip it for parts, patch up the Falcon (if it was still there) or trade in town for credits or passage (if it wasn’t).

And the Falcon was at least fully fuelled, that being one resource they weren’t short of. Chewie had managed to get in touch with an old smuggling contact who owed him a favour. He’d said he trusted the man as far as he could throw him. Normally that would mean the person was untrustworthy, but a wookie can throw a guy pretty far, so the Shyriiwook phrase meant the opposite of its Basic counterpart. So they’d made a quick stop and the wookie had traded in that favour for plenty of fuel, enough to keep them going for a while. If they had any idea where to go.

Ben might be some help there, but he seemed to be in a daze right now, following her with no apparent thought. She wanted to stop and shake him out of his stupor, before it occurred to her that he’d just lost his mother (probably – Rose wouldn’t believe General Organa was dead until she saw a body), and had lost his father just a few weeks ago. The father who had owned and flown the ship they were walking towards, which she guessed belonged to him now. And he’d had major feelings for Rey, by the sound of it. He needed time to grieve.

(So did she, probably, but there’d be time for that later, when she could curl up in a corner somewhere and sob.)

She just had to hope her new companion was a pilot. Han Solo’s son right?

So, they wouldn’t end up stranded. She was an engineer, damn it; she could do this. Whatever state they found the Falcon in (if they found it at all) she could get them a working ship. She wasn’t so sure about flying it. She could do OK, especially on anything like the ship they’d flown out of Canto Bight, which had practically flown itself, but she was no Poe, and the Falcon’s finnicky controls were legendary, and if they had to take that TIE fighter, she didn’t fancy her chances much.

It’s a relief when they get close enough that the rocky pile loomed before them. It didn’t seem to have taken damage, and she allowed herself to feel a spark of hope.

That spark bursts into a flame once they got close enough to see that the Falcon was still there and not a pile of charred wreckage. OK, not charred anyway. Wreckage was debatable.

Perhaps neither of them deep down believed they’d find the Falcon here, perhaps they both suspected a trap, because without saying anything to the other, they approached slowly, cautiously.

A familiar droid rolled down the entrance ramp, beeping. BB-8! She grinned, happy to see a familiar face. Well, faceplate.

Her grin faded as she took in what he was saying. He’d had no news from the base. They’re the first people he’s seen. Nobody made it out.

The droid came to a stop in from of them and she knelt down, patting it comfortingly and trying to explain.

“The First Order attacked. I was in town getting supplies -” she held up her bag, “- and came back to find the place destroyed. Nobody came this way?” Maybe someone came this way before the attack and was smart enough to hunker down and wait for survivors rather than go in all blasters firing.

But BB-8 beeped a denial, and her shoulders slumped.

<<Poe is safe?>>

She couldn’t bring herself to break the hard news, but BB-8 was well-versed in human facial expressions, and chirped mournfully, head hanging low, before shifting back upwards, eyeing her new friend. Have they met? BB doesn’t seem to know him.

“This is General Organa’s son, Ben.” He tilted his head. Suspicion? Curiosity? “He’s here to help.”

<<Ben has clearly helped very much.>>

Ben glared at the droid, but there didn’t seem to be much heat in it, and she worried he still felt responsible for not arriving in time. “Hey, he tried to get here in time to warn everyone about the attack. He tried, OK.”

Maybe if she worked hard enough she could convince herself that she’d tried enough too.

<<Apologies.>>

Ben nodded, a little awkwardly.

She got back to her feet, just about managing not to groan, feeling like an old woman. The effort was almost too much, and she staggered, nearly keeling over, before someone caught her, holding her upright.

But BB-8 was still there in front of her, and anyway he couldn’t do anything to prop her up, and Ben was a few paces away, holding his hand out…

Oh.

She’d never even seen anyone use the Force before – she knew Rey had been using her powers to shift heavy equipment, but she’d not seen it firsthand – let alone felt it.

She smiled in thanks, not sure if she can trust herself not to babble like an idiot if she tried talking.

He looked a little awkward, as if not used to praise, which confused her, and cleared his throat, suggesting they get on board.

Glad he seemed to be coming out of his daze, at least a little, she followed him onto the ship. He moved through the old ship slowly; obviously the place reminded him of his parents, especially his dad.

Then they enter the main hold, and things got… weird.

Artoo was there, and Ben greeted him, and then suddenly the droid has launched itself across the room, forcing Ben against the wall, beeping. She can’t make out what was being said, but it sounded enraged.

Ben was attempting to defend himself against whatever he was being accused of. “Look, I know I may have made some poor life choices, but…”

In response, Artoo produced an electrified tool and zapped the man with it. What the hell had Ben done? In the few weeks she’d known the droid, it’d seemed so friendly. Maybe a little cranky sure, but not mean.

Ben didn’t seem hurt though, even though it had looked like quite a jolt to her, and actually rolled his eyes. “I’ve spent the past few years working for someone who thought blasting me with lightning whenever I so much as breathed wrong - and I’m not even slightly exaggerating about that - was excellent fun. You’ll have to try harder than that.”

What?

Artoo’s response was to withdraw the tool and instead threaten the man with a rotating saw blade, whirring menacingly.

“OK, maybe that was a mistake…”

Enough was enough. As far as she could tell, the total number of Resistance personnel was down to four, and two of them were fighting.

She forced them apart before she could consider the wisdom of putting her arms near a saw. “Wait, wait, wait! What the hell is going on?”

There was a long pause, in which man and droid looked at each other, then at her, and then back at each other. It’s Ben who broke the awkward silence.

“So, do you have any idea where I’ve been for the last few years?”

She frowned, not liking to admit to the General’s son that she didn’t know anything. “Well, no… I never heard anyone mentioning you at all.”

The two of them seemed to find this amusing, which was pretty rude. Ben snorted and Artoo beeped derisively. At her feet BB-8 let out an indignant beep, so at least she wasn’t the only one not in on the joke.

“Sorry, sorry. But the Resistance probably talked about me a lot.” He pushed himself away from the wall, Artoo having backed off a little, and moved away from her, as if trying to find an open spot for whatever grand announcement he was going to make.

“Hey, pleased to meet you. My name’s Ben Solo, but lately I’ve gone by Kylo Ren, former Supreme Leader of the First Order.”

She stood frozen for a moment, before frantically fumbling for her blaster, almost dropping it in her haste to pull it from its holster. She pointed it at him, but her hands were shaking so much she knew she had a better chance of shooting herself.

He raised his hands, not making any move to his own blaster, or to the other object hanging from his belt, that she could now identify, now that they’re in decent lighting and she is actually paying attention, as a lightsaber. _That_ lightsaber.

That gesture might have worked on her before she knew who he was, what he could do. Now though, she knew better than to believe his hands not being near his weapons made him safe. She’s heard the stories.

“Look, I can explain-”

“What is there to explain? You’re a monster! You-” That’s when her body, essentially running on fumes since her panicked dash back to the base, finally gave up.

She must have fainted, as the next thing she is aware of is being carried. She knows who must be carrying her, and tries to struggle, but she is so weak that all she can do is twitch a little. She can hear BB-8 warbling in the background, and Artoo saying something in response.

She’s laid out on a soft surface (one of the crew bunks? she thinks), then there’s muffled banging from somewhere, and then the beeping of a mediscanner. She gets jabbed with something sharp, and then everything goes black.

*****

The next thing she was aware of is a light pressure on her chest. Everything felt fuzzy, and she can’t remember anything… Then, in a flash, she remembered. The base, attacked. Falling for Kylo Ren’s trickery. And now she was trapped under something. She opened her eyes, the simple task feeling like the toughest thing she’d ever done, expecting to see restraints, but instead she’s faced with a large pair of eyes: A curious porg perching on her. And beyond it, the bunk, and the crew quarters of the Falcon.

The porg jumped off and fluttered to the floor as BB-8 rolled over, beeping excitably. From what she could make out, she’d aggravated one of her barely-healed internal injuries, but a bacta injection and a lot of painkillers, and she will be fine, but she’s not to do anymore running around (this last part delivered in sterner, more emphatic beeps).

And then she saw the man sitting nearby. Be- Ky- _Him_. Snoke’s apprentice and enforcer. The Jedi Killer.

But… he’d helped her. It must have been him. Astromechs were configured for repairing machines, but people not so much. Why? She was the absolute last of the Resistance. Why not let her die? Why not force the issue and actually kill her? Destroy the droids, and the ship, and fly off on that TIE fighter that had to be his.

Surely he couldn’t be telling the truth about coming to help? His grief at Rey’s death couldn’t be genuine, could it? Not when killing her was his job. Not when he was a monster, and who ever heard of a monster having feelings?

He didn’t look much like a monster now, though. He was sitting on the floor next to the opposite bunk, asleep, with his head resting on the mattress and legs sprawled awkwardly, like he’d just sat down for a moment and fallen asleep like that.

Another porg was on the ground in front of him, eyeing him curiously, before hopping onto his legs.

Instantly the man is awake and has gone from awkward sprawl to a fighting crouch, ready to spring into action, snarling and glaring around him, lightsaber in hand.

It really does flicker and spit like fire. It also hums ominously; the stories hadn’t mentioned that. The light and sound seem to fill the room.

She’d thought waiting for the laser axe to come down on her neck had been terrifying, but seeing that glowing red blade barely a few feet from her makes that look like mild jitters. Her reaction is dulled by the painkillers circulating through her system though, and all she can do is lay there and stare.

Just as quickly as it had arisen, the storm passed. Kylo Ren focused properly, saw the terrified small creature in front of him, which had fallen onto its back when its new perch had suddenly moved and was flailing trying to regain its feet.

She fully expected him to sneer at the creature and kill it, but he blinked down at it for a moment, before retracting the blade, reattaching it to his belt, and reaching to help the porg to its feet.

She was pretty sure hallucinations weren’t a side effect of the type of painkillers in their medpacs…

“I really advise not disturbing me when I’m asleep. People have tried to kill me while I’m sleeping before and it’s given me serious trust issues.”

It was quickly joined by Rose’s porg, and he sat back down on the floor looking at them, curiously.

“What are you things anyway?”

“They’re porgs,” Rose answered without realising, then figured she’d already drawn his attention so she might as well keep talking. “They’re from the planet Luke Skywalker was living on and managed to infest the Falcon while it was there. They’re nuisances and Chewbacca hates them, but he says nothing he does to get rid of them works.”

He snorted at that. “If Chewie hadn’t wanted them on the Falcon, they wouldn’t be on the Falcon. He makes a show of being big and tough, but he’s a softie at heart.”

He tickles a porg under its chin (or rather, under where its chin would be if porgs had chins) and it warbles happily. Another couple show up out of nowhere, attracted by the happy noises.

“You’re not really how I expected.” She has never wanted painkillers to wear off this much in her life.

“What did you expect?”

“More… I don’t know… evil?”

“I’m extremely evil. Do you know how many people I’ve killed?” he said, ignoring the small porg that has fluttered up to perch on top of his head.

He had a good point – he was definitely a murderer. He wasn’t like Finn, who’d been forced into the First Order, and had refused to fight for them. But then why had he just saved her life? Why had he joined the First Order? Why had he betrayed his own family? Destroyed the Jedi temple? Done anything he had done?

“Why did you join the First Order?” Damnit. Talking to people had never been one of her skills, and now she couldn’t shut up.

He laughed, bitterly. “What was I supposed to do? Where else could I go?”

“Uh, literally anywhere?”

“You understand nothing!”

“So explain it to me!”

She’d heard stories that the ancient Sith could kill someone with a look. It was barely any comfort to report that this was apparently fictional. Or maybe he just didn’t know how. Still, there were plenty of other ways for him to kill her that would be more effective, and she thought he might end her after all, but after glowering at her for a few moments longer, he closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. The porg on his head jumped down into his lap instead.

Lucky for her, it seemed he wasn’t in a killing mood. Or maybe he was one of those villains who liked to soften people up before killing them by talking at them until they begged for death.

Maybe if she kept him talking long enough the drugs would wear off and she could talk coherently again. OK, maybe that was too much to hope for. Being able to avoid saying every thought that popped into her head would be enough. She might even learn something useful. Useful to what, she didn’t know, but one thing at a time. First task: Interrogate the former Supreme Leader. Second task: Find out why it was ‘former’. Third task: ???

He talked about a lonely childhood, son of a mother who was busy trying to forge a new galactic order and a father who had no idea what to do with something he couldn’t shoot or smuggle and was still getting to grips with the idea that the Force was actually a real thing, who both shot him wary looks and had arguments behind closed doors any time he expressed an emotion stronger than mild annoyance, raised by droids (Artoo and BB-8 interrupted, offended), and with a mysterious, whispering presence at the edges of his mind, that offered him support and encouragement, but also telling him how alone he was.

How they sent him off to his uncle, to train as a Jedi even though he wanted to be a pilot, far away on some desolate planet, like he was a problem to be hidden away in the hope that distance would bring improvement, or at least forgetfulness, or maybe just bore him to death.

How he had resisted those whispers in his mind, that said it was the only being that cared about him, that his family hated and feared him, all things that seemed true but he didn’t want to accept. Until he’d awoken one night to find his uncle standing over him, lightsaber ignited and poised to strike, and had reacted against the threat.

How he had stumbled from the ruins of the hut, to face the anger and suspicion of the other apprentices, who took an understandably dim view of the murder of a galactic war hero, which inevitably escalated from accusatory pointed questions, to heated argument between him, his accusers, and a group of people who had taken exception to Luke’s teaching style and were fine with him being squished by masonry, to further heated argument but with lightsabers (and any other weapons that came to hand), to a lot of dead bodies and a fire that nobody could recall starting and a desire to not be found standing next to said pile of corpses while holding murder weapons.

How a hasty discussion had led to nobody having any idea where to go beyond a vague consensus that going home after murdering a bunch of people, even in self-defence, was not going to result in smiles and hugs. But going on the lam would just look suspicious and would result in them being hunted down by every bounty hunter going.

How the dark shadow that had hung over him suddenly looked like a sanctuary from the blazing wrath that was about to fall upon them, simply for the crime of not standing piously while allowing themselves to be cut down (like a true Jedi would). How he had suddenly, somehow, known exactly where to go to find that shelter. How they’d agreed, and stolen a ship, flying off into the Unknown Regions.

How what he’d found had been everything he had expected, but also nothing like he had imagined. But leaving would mean everything had been for nothing, and show how weak he was. And he had nowhere to go to anyway. Especially when he found that Luke Skywalker had survived, and had surely told some lurid tale of how his nephew was a cold-blooded killer who had run amok for no reason.

How he had kept chasing this dream of being an evil dark lord, hoping that if he pushed himself far enough, he’d achieve some sort of mystical zen state of pure darkness and his conscience would shut the kriff up and let him get a decent night’s sleep. But he’d never been good enough. Or bad enough. Whatever.

It was weird to hear Kylo Ren, First Order attack dog and bogeyman of the Resistance, wail about how he just wasn’t evil enough, and she wasn’t sure what to say. Was she supposed to reassure him by saying that plenty of people saw him as the monster he had aspired to be? But that wasn’t something she should be rewarding in him…

And then Rey had shown up. She was immediately intriguing, different, and called to him in a way he couldn’t quite put a finger on. He couldn’t say why he was so fascinated with her, why he’d refused to entrust her to anyone else when kidnapping her on Takodana (this was a really weird relationship).

And when she’d turned out not only to have the Force, but be easily as strong as him, he’d wanted desperately to teach her, nurture her obvious talents (though it’d turned out later that he had already helped on that score because she’d picked out Force skills from his mind during the oddest interrogation ever).

(She wondered if this desire to nurture Rey was related to his belief that nobody had nurtured him.)

And then she’d beaten him – him! – in combat, scarring him. (She’d always assumed Kylo Ren was insane, but wearing-a-dopey-expression-while-talking-about-a-girl-slashing-his-face-open-and-fingering-the-scar was a little crazier than she’d expected.) And he was truly awed. Sure he was injured and reeling from having killed Han Solo, and the planet was literally falling apart around them, so it’s safe to say he wasn’t at his best, but still.

He’d thought the next time he saw her would be across a battlefield (not an entirely unenticing prospect, though it probably would mean he’d have to kill her, which would be like destroying a priceless work of art). But then she’d appeared right before him. Like a dream. Somehow, amazingly, the Force was allowing them to connect across the galaxy. They’d gone from trading questions and barbed insults to accepting this strange thing, to accepting each other. And after learning the circumstances of what had happened that fateful night at Luke’s academy, she’d chosen to come to him on the Supremacy.

Only Snoke had not seen her worth, and after torturing her, had demanded his apprentice kill her, in the latest in a long long line of tests of loyalty, all of them meant to prove himself, cement his position on the Dark Side. Only none of the previous had ever helped. Just ways of getting him to do Snoke’s bidding, while also tormenting him.

(He’d looked around the Falcon as he’d said that, but not as if he was really seeing his surroundings.)

He’d made a different choice instead, killing his master, before offering Rey a place at his side. Which she’d forcefully rejected, going for a lightsaber instead, resulting in a tug of war that had left him unconscious and he’d awoken alone to find the ship in ruins.

“It was kind of hard not to take that personally. So I was pretty mad. It didn’t help that the first thing I saw when I came round was Hux’s face. Nobody should ever have to endure that. I declared myself Supreme Leader because, well why not? And then my uncle goes and shows up.” He sighed.

That had been a really wild ride of a story, she had to admit. Then she realised something. “Wait, so you were both on the Supremacy at the same time as us?”

He looked at her blankly, so she told him about how she and Finn had snuck aboard the ship, after swinging by Canto Bight to pick up what turned out to have been a mistake, (though she’d gotten to ride a Fathier, so it hadn’t been all bad), all in a desperate plan to save the Resistance fleet.

He looked about to say something horribly snippy but also brutally accurate about how that had worked out, but then his eyes widened and he grinned, pointing at her excitedly. “You’re the one who bit Hux!”

Okay so apparently the mission hadn’t been a _total_ failure. Just an almost total failure.

“He wouldn’t stop whining about it and how it was probably infected. Naturally l tried to be supportive. By sending him information on common diseases in the Otomok System.” He peered at her. “You’re not diseased, are you?”

“No!”

He shrugged. “Pity.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she changed the subject slightly. “Why didn’t Rey say she’d been on board?”

He fixed her with a vaguely contemptuous look. “What was she supposed to say? ‘oh hey guys! I just wandered into the midst of the First Order after l held hands with Kylo Ren because l thought there was good in him. Oh yeah and by the way l have a sort of mental link with him but it’s fine!’ Ha! You’d toss her in the brig. Or try to anyway.”

He paused. “Do you guys even have a brig? I guess you’d have had to shove her in one of the smuggling compartments in this ship.”

“What compartments? Where?” She’d heard plenty of stories of Han Solo’s smuggling exploits, but after spending a couple of weeks crammed into a ship with multiple people (and porgs), it hadn’t seemed big enough to hide anything.

“Everywhere. The ship is riddled with them.” He waved a hand and a panel swung open, to the flapping consternation of several porgs. “Ooh! Corellian whisky!”

A bottle flew out of the compartment and into his hand, and he opened it, taking a long swig.

She eyed it covetously, and he spotted the look.

“Nope. No alcohol for you. Not with those painkillers you’re on.”

She scowled. “Everything I’ve heard about you is true. You’re evil and heartless beyond belief.”

He raised the bottle at her in salute. “Guilty.”

Her resentment overriding her self-preservation (which was pretty much non-existent anyway), she felt compelled to ask, “So how come you’re no longer in charge?”

He glared at her. She glared back.

He gave in first, looking down at the bottle in his hand. “Hux.”

“What? Did you get sick of having to put up with him?”

“Oh I reached that point ages ago. About five minutes after meeting him, to be precise. No, he apparently decided that he’d had it with me, and made a bid for power. However his timing was terrible and I was conveniently near an exit when he struck. On my way out of said exit, I heard an announcement that the Resistance had been located and their elimination was about to commence. Rey was all I had left; I wasn’t about to lose her too.”

He swigged the rest of the booze, before tossing the bottle away (mercifully, it landed on a discarded flightsuit, preventing injuries from broken glass in their immediate future). “As you know, I was super successful. Rey is fine. The Resistance escaped. Everything is great.”

There’s really nothing she can say to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Yes, he's wearing his TFA outfit. I like it. So sue me. I'll go to the barricades for TLJ hair though.
> 
> \- A little explanation of Rose's apparent cluelessness regarding Ben Solo's fate: I have several headcanons relating to what happened the night Luke's academy was destroyed, but the one I'm going with here (because it means people aren't going to immediately figure out he's Kylo Ren) is that there was a cover up, & the official story is that some random attacked the academy (I mean, that's not wrong, since Snoke basically orchestrated Ben's fall to the Dark Side...) & killed everyone. Because this scenario meant that the families of those who had gone darkside - including Leia - didn't have to deal with the stigma of being associated with that (though it makes for awkward explanations should any of them change their minds & come home). Obviously Han's explanation in TFA contradicts this, but I figure he's talking to two people who are pretty closely involved with the situation. The galaxy maybe has some awareness of 'Kylo Ren' the 'Jedi Killer', but aren't sure if he's real or not, & are hazy on the details, maybe not necessarily connecting him to the First Order or the Skywalker family?
> 
> But wait, you say, what about the First Order? Surely they must know/suspect the Knights of Ren were Luke's students? After all, where else would they come from? Ah, this is where the Acolytes of the Beyond come in. If you haven't read the _Aftermath_ trilogy, this is an terrorist group/cult who went about causing chaos  & generally fucking shit up during the ending & immediate aftermath of the Galactic Civil War. They worshipped the Dark Side of the Force, & \- here's the important thing - were really obsessed with masks. And since Imperial Advisor Yupe Tashu was involved, it's likely they were an official part of the Empire's plan to take the rest of the galaxy down with them. So, the First Order, as the Empire's successor, would have files on this group & a general awareness of them. The _Aftermath_ books make a huge deal of these guys even though their story doesn't really go anywhere or relate to anything, leading to some speculation that they might be the KoR, before Luke's explanation in TLJ seemed to refute this. Still, the explanation that they're the origin of the KoR,  & Luke's students supplanted them & took over the brand could still apply in canon. And I figure it's pretty reasonable for the First Order to assume that this random bunch of dark side worshippers wearing masks is the same as another random bunch of dark side worshippers who wear masks.
> 
> So Ben Solo's miraculous return would seem more weird than suspicious, & it would take some time before even the First Order connected Ben Solo to Kylo Ren.
> 
>  
> 
> Next chapter: Kylo Ren Has to Return Some Library Books


	5. In Which Kylo Ren Has to Return Some Library Books

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because Ben is a massive nerd who would be horrified to find his girlfriend has stolen some library books.
> 
> If you follow my tumblr you'll know that here be angst.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked that much. His throat burned and he was fairly sure it wasn’t just down to the whisky.

The First Order, like any bureaucratic military organisation that aspired to governance, loved meetings and debriefings and presentations, but he was only occasionally called on for input, and when he was required to contribute anything, he never saw the point in dragging things out or using ten words where one would do. And the less he spoke to Snoke, the better, as the more he said in his master’s presence, the likelier it would be that he’d reveal some weakness or inadequacy that would earn a reprimand or punishment.

He didn’t really have any friends. Even his Knights hadn’t really met that criteria. They were simply people he knew, linked by circumstance and shared experience. When he met or communicated with any of them, there would be some conversation, relaying information regarding recent missions, maybe some small talk regarding health or the weather (if they were planetside), a spot of griping about a particularly recalcitrant or irritating officer (usually Hux), but that was about it. Maybe that was enough to qualify as a friend - he wasn’t sure of the definition and he couldn’t say he had much practical experience.

His interactions with Rey had been the most meaningful he’d had in years, but had been all too short. Something he hadn’t minded, when he’d thought there’d be many more to come, a lifetime to have them in. But now he was stuck with those scant perfect moments that just served to show how empty the rest of his life was in terms of meaningful connections.

How had his life come to this? And why did Rey have to suffer the consequences of the fact that the universe apparently hated him?

His social skills had more rust on them than the Falcon, but he was reasonably sure that he was supposed to ask for Rose’s story in return. That was how it worked, right? But he couldn’t bring himself to care right now. The report on her and FN-2187’s infiltration attempt had given her system of origin and stated that she had engineering skills (as well as a vicious bite). She probably had some tragic backstory; everyone in the Resistance did - it was almost certainly a membership requirement. It might even be interesting. But he wasn’t in the mood right now.

Rey was dead. That was all that mattered.

He sat there for what seemed like hours, though he knows it was probably mere minutes (his maudlin disposition not helped by his memory supplying that the drink stash he’d uncovered had been something Han thought to be his secret, but Leia had not only known about it, but drunk more of it than her husband had) watching these strange ‘porg’ things.

He just… didn’t know what to do.

Decisions had always been made for him. First by his parents. (His mother, really – Han had always bowed to her judgement after a token argument, seemingly unwilling to stand up for his son.) Then by Luke. Then Snoke.

Even when he had made decisions or taken responsibility for something, such as command decisions while on First Order missions, he had really only been picking options from a limited selection of choices, where outcomes would often be pretty much the same either way, but one option would be preferred over all the others. And if he’d been in any doubt which that was, there’d be an ever-watchful Snoke helpfully whispering in his ear.

He could have chosen not to order the execution of the villagers at Tuanul, for instance. But that would have ended badly for all involved. Those people had had their village invaded and their homes ransacked and burned. However important his mission was, they were legitimately pissed off, and his troops still had to thoroughly scour the area in search of the map (or anything that might prove useful in finding it). Doing so under the eye of a bunch of angry locals having to watch their village be ransacked and burned would result in casualties on both sides, the end result being the deaths of the villagers anyway. If he’d opted to have them taken prisoner, they’d still have been executed as soon as they arrived on board the Finalizer and an officer inevitably countermanded his order rather than deal with processing prisoners.

And he’d have had to deal with Snoke questioning his commitment to the Dark Side. Or to put it another way, he’d be brutally punished for his weakness. That’s assuming he made it that far without encountering a tragic ‘accident’ courtesy of Phasma, who would not appreciate a demonstration of mercy and had almost certainly planned out multiple ways of having him killed.

Some part of his mind, that sounded a lot like his mother, had argued that this was a coward’s excuse. That even a small decision should be made based on what was right, even if it failed. He’d ignored that. Having a conscience just made life in the First Order even more miserable than it was already.

Even killing Snoke and then taking over had both seemed like the only courses of action to take in those moments. Snoke had been hurting Rey and would dispose of his apprentice once he’d served his purpose (he’d always known deep down that he was nothing more than a tool to his Master, hadn’t even bothered to deny it when Han had pointed it out; he’d just kept hoping that if he truly proved himself, he would be considered worthy of something more, but if even sacrificing his own father had not brought him that, what would?). He had to die. Becoming Supreme Leader was the surest way of making sure he had control of his life and could keep Rey safe, and then a matter of survival when he woke up alone, facing Hux and with no escape that didn’t involve fighting through the ruined ship to reach an escape pod or TIE fighter in order to reach a group of people who hated him more than the First Order did.

Even his brief attempt at ruling the galaxy had not involved much in the way of decision-making. Oh there’d been orders to give and choices to make, but still, even at the very top, these had been based on options presented to him. Whether to have the Supremacy repaired or start over simply salvaging what was useful and abandoning the rest. Where to tow the wreck to for the repairs or salvaging (whichever option he went with) to be done. To do this, or to do that. To go here or to go there. Confirm or deny this staff transfer. Read and sign this document.

Hux was certainly involved there, feeding him enough to let himself think he was in control, keeping him busy while the loth-rat made plans to take over. It was hard to say how much – it was impossible for one person to make every single decision, after all, so some of his ignorance was certainly down to normal delegation. Palpatine wouldn’t have concerned himself with the lunch rota on Scarif after all – but he’d definitely been kept ignorant.

But it was safe to say that even in the ultimate position of power, his decisions had been controlled by someone else.

Not now though. Rose would certainly have opinions, and so would the droids, but his life was his own.

Freedom, it turned out, was extremely scary and involved a lot of responsibility.

OK, Kylo. Think. Break it down into small pieces.

He might not have any idea where to go next, but they couldn’t stay here. As isolated as this base was, somebody would have heard some distant commotion, or noticed a star destroyer stopping by, and at this very moment locals were probably on their way to investigate. If they knew about this place then it was only a matter of time before they thought to look here. If they didn’t then they would find it eventually. It’s possible those people might be helpful and kind and shelter them instead of selling them out to the First Order. But Kylo Ren had learned the hard way that trusting in the kindness of strangers got you nowhere. Ben Solo had learned that even trusting in the people you knew was a road to pain.

But where to go? He had no place to call home, and he knew damn well Rose didn’t either. And the First Order had been waiting for the moment they achieved dominion over the galaxy. They’d prepared for this and would be spreading across the galaxy like a virus. Emerging proudly from the Unknown Regions, contacting associates and sympathisers, welcomed by old Imperial loyalists and people who didn’t care who was in charge so long as they benefited. Filling the vacuum left by the New Republic and using a convenient template set by the Empire, moving back into old bases, buildings, and roles like they’d never been gone.

They might have been doing that already over the last few weeks while he’d supposedly been in charge, actually. Not like anyone had told him anything.

Picking a planet at random could pitch them right in the middle of a fleet of star destroyers or see them sold out by a ruler keen to appease their new masters.

And choosing a planet strongly likely to have Resistance sympathies in the hope of sanctuary could result in a reception frostier than Hoth once he introduced himself. He could lie, but considering the ship he was flying, someone would figure it out.

Takodana, normally the perfect haven under these circumstances, was right out as he had very definitely broken Maz’s ‘No fighting’ rule and was barred for life. He could probably try arguing that it was stormtroopers and TIE pilots who had done the actual fighting, but she’d liked his father, and would probably not accept this loophole.

There were probably plenty of options, even with all these complications. But the galaxy was so huge and there were so many unknowns and he was exhausted, drained from the loss of the one person who had given meaning to his conflicted existence, and from the sleep he’d never actually ended up getting.

A vision came to him then. A calming vista he’d seen, but not through his own eyes. A dream meant to soothe and calm. A place that now had a name.

Ahch-To.

It was in the middle of nowhere, and extremely hard to find (he should damn well know). And the only people in the First Order who knew its name and location were dead.

It was perfect, at least as a temporary stop while he tried to work out where to actually go.

Only it was the last place in the universe he wanted to go.

It had been where his uncle had fled to and lived for years. It had been where Rey had sat and reached out to him across the galaxy. It was strong in the Light side of the Force, where he did not belong and was still struggling to extricate himself from.

He really really really really really did not want to go there.

There had to be somewhere else. Looking around in the hope of inspiration, he noticed a book on the table. An actual book, made of actual paper, and clearly very old.

“What’s that?”

“It’s called a book.”

He gave her a withering stare, which had been known to terrify hardened officers. She simply rolled her eyes.

“It’s one of the ancient Jedi texts that Rey brought back with her from some ancient Jedi library. She said nobody was using them.”

“She just… took some library books?”

“Um, yes?”

“Without permission?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“We are going to Ahch-To.”

*****

He’d half expected someone to argue when he’d announced they were going. He’d actually hoped for it, in fact. As horrified as he was at the disrespect shown to the very concept of libraries, he was desperate for any excuse not to go there. Or at least an excuse not to stay there any longer than it would take to put the books back. Which meant an alternative suggestion. Any suggestion. Literally anywhere.

But the others had actually considered the idea, and not in a way that suggested they were counting the reasons it was stupid.

The BB unit had trilled a query regarding the possibility of sensing survivors using the Force. He’d snapped that that wasn’t how the Force worked, but then conceded that he could sense his mother.

He avoided mentioning that he could contact her. He was almost desperate enough to reach out to her, but she’d left Rey to die. He had no intention of talking to her, either via the Force or in person.

Rose was brightening as she considered. “Oh yes! That’s where they’d have gone if anyone survived!”

“Without the Falcon?”

“There’s a spaceport in town. Maybe some people got out and escaped through the woods!”

It sounded desperate, ludicrous, but… his mother _was_ still alive, and wasn’t that the likeliest place to run to? Considering the decrepit condition of this base, it hadn’t been anyone’s first choice, meaning choices were slim indeed, and any survivors would be facing the same decision he was about where to go next. And this was the obvious option, for the same reasons there were for him.

“Finn might be alive!” From her expression it was obvious she had feelings for the former stormtrooper. He was about to point out that if the man was alive, that meant it was because he’d run and left her to die. Then he thought about how happy he’d be to learn that Rey was alive even if that meant she’d found a way to break their bond, and for once, held his tongue.

Just as well he did, as her next words reignited the spark of hope within him and fanned it into a white-hot flame. “You know, Rey said that Luke had cut himself off from the Force. Maybe that’s why you can’t sense her?”

Artoo chimed in confirmation of this.

He savoured the feeling of hope blooming in his chest. He’d never really had hope until he’d met Rey, and now he wondered how he’d got by without it, because it was the most amazing, addictive feeling. Yes. That would be it. She had cut herself off because she thought his warning was a trick, and that he was hunting her! It hurt that she would think that. (Could they even lie to each other over the bond?) But still, it would mean she was alive, and he could explain the mistake. Or maybe she thought his Knights could track her? She knew little enough about the Force that she might not realise that you had to have a strong personal link to someone to be able to attempt to track them from afar, and that while a Force sensitive person might be able to sense you close by, it'd only be if they were actually looking for Force presences.

Maybe the urge to go to Ahch-To was about more than books. It was the Force itself whispering in his ear!

They had a destination, and a goal. Everything would be alright.

*****

Another wave of memories hit him once he stepped into the cockpit.

Something in him resisted sitting in the pilot’s chair. And not because of the porg that was occupying it either. That had never been his chair. It wasn’t as if he’d never sat in it before – as a child he’d sat in it often (though not when actual piloting was required), and when Han had judged him old enough he’d sat in the seat while learning to fly the ship (always with Han hovering, ready to correct any mistakes) – but it somehow seemed different now. He wasn’t merely temporarily occupying a chair while its owner was elsewhere. Now it was his.

Movement in the corridor behind him told him that Rose and the two droids were following behind. Not wanting to stand around awkwardly, he forced himself to shoo the porg away and sit in the pilot’s seat.

A blinking light indicated waiting messages. He flipped a switch hopefully, but there was only the warning he’d sent and nothing more. No ‘If anyone else has survived this attack please rendezvous at these coordinates’, or messages from some ally or other offering a safe haven. Nothing that helped determine what to do. Just a reminder that he’d failed.

Rose stumbled into the co-pilot’s seat, using Rey’s staff as a crutch. He bit back the urge to yell at her for touching something of Rey’s. He was sitting in a seat that he certainly didn’t deserve to sit in.

He forced himself to get a grip on his anger and despair trying to crush the spark of hope still burning, controlling it rather than letting it control him, trying to consider the task he’d set himself and work out how to achieve it.

As soon as they’d had hit hyperspace, Rose had given up the co-pilot’s seat, muttering about checking something or other, and BB-8 had rolled off with her. It was a reasonable excuse - there was always something to be done with the Falcon - but he sensed that she just didn’t want to be crammed into a cockpit with him in a state of awkward silence.

He couldn’t blame her, though that left him _alone_ in a state of awkward silence, which was arguably worse, sitting in a chair that didn’t belong to him, but did, on a ship that didn’t belong to him, but did. With a pair of golden dice hanging from a hook above him, that he’d treasured as some kind of magical talisman, that hadn’t protected their owner.

He pulled the dice down, letting them rest in his palm, as he had with their illusory counterparts a few weeks ago.

Memories play out around him. Han showing him what the controls did. Han leaving him unsupervised just a few minutes later, and Chewie having to rush in to stop a small boy who naturally wanted to demonstrate what he’d just learned. Sitting on his father’s lap, helping to fly the ship, by pressing a particular button or switch when he was told to, delighted at this small responsibility. Older, sitting in the chair by himself, with Han hovering over him, directing him as he operated controls and piloted the ship by himself (well, with Chewie as his co-pilot, obviously), the lesson ending with a reminder that he was not to tell his mother about this. And then older still, as a teen, sitting sullenly behind, not feeling like he belonged there anymore.

A burble from behind him made him jump in his seat. He’d forgotten about Artoo.

<<Are you just going to sit there brooding all the way to Ahch-To?>>

He glared at the droid. “I am not brooding. I am thinking.”

This was met with a derisive beep.

Unable to bear the memories all around him and the judgemental attitude that seemed to surround the droid, he launched himself to his feet and swept out of the cockpit, throwing an, “I’m going to get some sleep. Let me know if anything happens,” over his shoulder, just to show he wasn’t running.

He stormed into the captain’s quarters and shut the door behind him, wishing it was the type of door with hinges rather than a sliding panel. You couldn’t slam a sliding door dramatically. If you timed it right you could sweep through it just as it closed, but that only worked if people were around to see.

He quickly realised his mistake in coming in here. The Falcon was full of ghosts for him. No corner was safe. But he’d assumed the cockpit was the worst of it. But no, this was his father’s personal space. Where he’d slept. Where Ben had slept too when he was small, curled up next to his dad after some epic bedtime story of skulduggery and space battles. Where he was probably conceived too, come to think of it (though he really did not want to think about it).

Han hadn’t been one for collecting possessions, living like he expected to have to suddenly flee for his life in the middle of the night leaving everything behind. And the Falcon had been through several owners over the years since he’d lost it (though none seemed to have held onto it or used it long enough to leave any mark on it). But there were still signs of his presence here.

A pile of clothing on top of a trunk it was supposed to be inside. Some crates of machine parts that looked to have been partly sorted through until an interruption, and never finished. A box of tools for doing repairs on the above. A stack of flight manuals.

It hadn’t been moved or tidied up, even though the remains of the Resistance had spent a few weeks crammed into this ship, and surely space was tight. But a glance at the shelf by the bed told him why. A large silver ring. A cluster of hairpins. A sash embroidered with the crest of the royal house of Alderaan. The symbol seemed to taunt him. _I told you all about my home. You know how much losing it hurt me. And yet you chose to work with people who had a weapon that could destroy a whole system at once._

There was also a bundle of papers, slightly crumpled and dog-eared from being handled and referred to. He moved closer, expecting some sort of Resistance documents, made with ink and paper to prevent theft by slicers. But horrified recognition struck when he saw the looping handwriting, the same letters and words repeated over and over, along with smudges and mistakes. Some of his attempts to practice the calligraphy he’d pursued as a child. She’d kept them. Even now. Even after all he’d done. She’d kept them.

Unable to properly process the implications of this, he reacted in the only way he knew how, lashing out with the Force and throwing a box of parts against a wall, before slumping down onto the bed.

Again, he thought about reaching out. She’d kept these, after all, and as he’d led the attack on the Raddus, he was positive he’d sensed her feeling forgiveness for him, a wish for him to return… And maybe, just maybe, she hadn’t left Rey to die after all, that she’d fled _with_ her to keep her safe…

Looking out across the room, his eyes caught on something just sticking out from behind a crate. There was nothing special about it, but it seemed to call to him somehow. He pulled it to him with the Force, and saw that it was a package, wrapped in fabric, fastened in place with string.

It had probably once sat on a shelf or had some other, better placement, but had fallen off during some bout of aerial acrobatics as the Falcon sought to shake of a pursuer or was thrown around by some malfunction or other. The dust covering it suggested that this had been a while ago. Turning it over he saw the words ‘For Ben’ scrawled on the material in the haphazard handwriting of someone who had barely learned to read, and had probably rarely written anything in his life.

He unwrapped it, carefully, fearfully, wondering what it contained.

It was a set of tools for ship repair. But not like the others lying around here, aged and much-used and from many different sources. No, these were shiny and new and consistently designed, in a special case designed to hold each one in its own place.

As gifts went, it was pointless. No neatly-curated set could ever have every single tool that would be needed (even a casual glance could tell him that several tools necessary to keep the Falcon going on a daily basis were absent). And Han’s lack of organisation meant that there were multiples of each tool rattling around the freighter anyway. He’d have been better off collecting a set from spares that were lying around.

But that was Han. He’d never really thought gift-buying through.

They were stupid.

They were perfect.

He threw them across the room and collapsed back on the bed. Something other than hope burned within him now. Shame.

The desire to contact his mother dissipated. He couldn’t. All these reminders of his past were just that: the past. The man who had bought those tools for him was dead at his hand. And after that deed, those papers had surely become a representation of how wrong she’d been. That sense that she forgave him and wanted him back had been his imagination and nothing more.

Even if it hadn’t, his ascent to Supreme Leader would have changed everything. She couldn’t pretend to herself that he wasn’t a monster when he had chosen to take that step, after everything. She couldn’t kid herself that her son was following orders given by others when he was the one giving those orders.

Alone, on his father’s ship, surrounded by his family’s possessions and ghostly memories, he let the tears that he’d spent years pushing away fall.

*****

As the last bolt was tightened, Rose gave a sigh of satisfaction. That would do for now.

Though she wasn’t allowed to do the work herself. BB-8 had insisted that she needed to rest. Initially she’d objected – it was just basic repairs, something to keep her occupied – but the first time she’d tried to pry open a panel to check inside, her whole body felt like someone had set it on fire. It seemed like that panicked rush back to the base (after a day spent on her feet) had almost completely undone the healing she’d done over the past few weeks. So she’d allowed the droid to take over, but insisted on supervising.

Her body might need rest, but her mind was too restless to stay cooped up in a bunk. Really, the best thing she could do right now was to spend time in the cockpit familiarising herself with the controls. She was rated to fly small shuttles and similar ships, nothing like an ancient Corellian freighter that had been modified more than alcohol in a cheap cantina. She hadn’t thought it would be that big of a deal until she’d walked into the cockpit, sat in the co-pilot’s chair and looked at the vast array of controls in front of her. And beside her. And above her. And behind her. There were a _lot_ of controls.

She felt she’d managed OK on takeoff, pressing buttons she was fairly sure she’d seen Chewie press and trying to look like she knew what she was doing. Nothing had gone wrong, so she had evidently done alright. But she was sure she’d seen one of the switches on her side move by itself, and while it was possible it was just loose or was meant to do that automatically in response to something else, she thought it likely the Force was being used. Which had made her feel pretty useless and patronised.

But she didn’t want to spend time in a confined space with Kylo Ren. Or whatever he was called. She still wasn’t sure how to feel about this. His story of how he’d ended up working for the bad guys was more complex than she’d expected, and he _had_ come to help them instead of just running off to some new life, and he was Leia’s son, and Paige had kept insisting that even the troops of the First Order were still people who deserved a chance, and Finn had proved her belief, and Rey had though he was worth reaching out to, and and and…

Great, now her head hurt as much as the rest of her.

She had to hope that other people from the Resistance had survived somehow and they could rendezvous on Ahch-To. Most of them had survived crazier things in unlikelier circumstances. But what if they weren’t? What would she do then?

Maybe she should leave. But where would she go? And could she manage by herself? She’d never been alone before. There’d always been someone else looking out for her. Her parents, Paige, Finn, the Resistance. All gone now. She had at least some street smarts, and there were always people out there looking for mechanics. But how long would she survive in a galaxy ruled by the First Order, with nobody to watch her back?

BB-8 emitted a series of concerned beeps, and she forced a smile. “I’m OK. Just tired.”

<<Then you must rest! Organics need so much recharging time after repairs!>>

She grinned genuinely at the droid’s use of mechanical terminology for living beings. Maybe she could take him to watch her back? But he was distinctive-looking and the First Order’s bounty on him had been so recent that he would bring his own set of problems from people who thought it was still in effect. Not that she would leave him behind, but… problems.

She groaned as she got to her feet. Now that she was no longer distracted by the Falcon’s workings, she realised that the painkillers had worn off and she ached everywhere. Her brain was still working a hundred parsecs a minute though and she’d go mad if she didn’t occupy herself with _something_. She gritted her teeth. She was going to go back into that cockpit and properly familiarise herself with the controls, no matter who was lurking there and no matter how many people he’d killed. If she had to go on the run on her own, the more ships she had experience flying the better, and even if other people from the Resistance had survived, there was no guarantee any of them would be pilots, or be in any condition to fly anything. She was not going to let him intimidate her.

But when she stomped resolutely into the cockpit, it was empty. She sighed with relief (or perhaps disappointment at not being able to show him how little he scared her) and sat in the co-pilot’s chair, looking around at the controls. There somehow hadn’t seemed that many whenever she’d peered in here to check on Rey.

She focused on the ones in front of her, where logic dictated the most important controls should be, and after some careful examination, and without the pressure of trying to fly the ship in a quick getaway, identified some of the most important ones she’d be required to use. The large numbers of controls gave the illusion of complexity, but it was pretty simple once you let yourself look. She would at least be able to manage when they needed to land, and also if she needed to take off again.

Still… she didn’t like not knowing everything about how a mechanical thing worked. Sometimes the little things really did matter. Was there a flight manual of some kind? She’d familiarised herself with the workings of the Raddus that way. Ship’s log? Blueprints? Cheat sheets? Looking around, she couldn’t see anything. And from the state this ship was in, if there was one, it could be anywhere.

Maybe in the main hold? No, she’d spent too much time there to have missed that? The captain’s quarters seemed the most likely place. Come to think of it, she had seen a pile of something that had looked like flight manuals when she’d passed it once while the door was open. Even if they weren’t what she was looking for, they’d at least be something to read. It felt wrong to go in there which Han Solo dead, and Leia and Chewie who-knew-where (please let him not be dead!), but she was just going to check this one thing. She wasn’t doing any harm.

It was only when she’d opened the door and stepped inside that she realised she’d failed to consider that the captain’s quarters _might be occupied by a captain_. Obviously he’d take this room. It was, after all, his ship (unless Leia laid claim to it), he’d probably grown up on it, learned to fly on it, and he had been sitting in the pilot’s seat. He might not have come out and declared it, but he was, to all intents and purposes, the captain of this ship. And with the way he’d freaked out when that porg had woken him up he’d probably be less than keen sleeping in one of the crew bunks.

This was all extremely obvious and something she should have figured out _before_ walking into his private space without even knocking. Not being intimidated was one thing, but she still had some self-preservation.

Luckily, it seemed he was asleep, sprawled on the bed in his clothes, like he’d been so tired he hadn’t bothered to take them off. (Though this was probably just as well.) She was about to back away to the door when she noticed… was that? Yes! Those definitely seemed to be flight manuals. Slowly, cautiously, taking care not to trip over or knock against anything and wake up the sleeping rathtar, she moved closer.

Jackpot.

She would just take the top one for now. The stack looked solid enough, and she had steady hands, but she was taking no chances when there was a possibility of being gutted by a lightsaber. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice and realise she’d been poking around in his room while he slept, and if she read it and needed more, she could always say she found it and ask if there were more she could read.

 _Target acquired_ , she thought, as she lifted her prize off the stack. Taking one last look at him to make sure he showed no signs of waking up, she almost dropped it at getting a good look at his face, which she hadn’t been able to see properly from the doorway.

She left the room as quietly as she could, but was more concerned with speed, desperate to get out of there, unable to believe what she had seen. As terrifying as the risk of being killed by a half-asleep darksider reacting to someone invading his space had been, this was something else entirely. It was only when she was in the crew quarters, curled up in a bunk as if she was hiding, that she was able to process what she’d seen.

Kylo Ren. The Jedi Killer. The monster who was the source of so many stories amongst the Resistance. The creature who had inspired joking comments of ‘Be good, or Kylo Ren will get you!’ to younger recruits.

He had cried himself to sleep.

What was she supposed to make of that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Sorry this took so long. Transitional chapters can be a bitch & this took on a life of its own. It got so long that I've split it up into a couple of chapters. Exactly how many depends on where I can find suitable breaks in the story, but there is more coming shortly.
> 
> \- I had genuinely been meaning to get the actual plot underway, as I've dithered over 4 chapters that are basically the same chapter from different perspectives. And while I'd wanted to have them visit Ahch-To to retrieve something, I figured it could wait until I kicked things off, & throw it in as an interlude. But the problem is you can't have your heroes blow up some bases when your evil empire hasn't got any, & all their conquered territories are in nowhere sections of the outer rim that nobody cares about. The TLJ title crawl & the final issue of the Poe Dameron comic did hint that they were already invading even while the evacuation of D'Qar/Battle of Crait was taking place & this is a few weeks after that, but still, figured I needed to let the bad guys get a little more of a head start. So our intrepid heroes have chosen denial. How will that work out for them? Stay tuned to find out!
> 
> Also it gives the Ben Solo Pain Train a chance to build up a nice head of steam. I'm sorry I lured you in with humour & then made you sad. No, wait. No I'm not. *evil laugh*
> 
>  
> 
> Next chapter: Lost Property is Returned


	6. In Which Lost Property is Returned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have finished dividing up what was meant to be chapter 5, & have got 4 chapters out of it (including this one & the one I posted earlier tonight). So there's another 2 to come. I'll post those tomorrow though.

He was shaken awake by the ship lurching as it emerged from hyperspace. He hadn’t even realised that he’d fallen asleep, and he wasn’t sure he felt any better than he had before. He felt like he’d only been out for 5 minutes while also having slept for years.

Well, better get out there and see where they were. Hopefully Ahch-To, but with his luck and the Falcon’s temperament, they could have materialised right in the middle of an armada of First Order ships and the only reason they hadn’t been blown up yet was because they’d been mistaken for space debris.

But when he looked out of the cockpit’s viewport, they were above a pristine planet, covered in vast ocean and dotted with small islands and a few larger landmasses.

Rose stumbled in right after him, looking as sluggish as he felt, but the sight awed her.

Somehow, he knew where to go, which he tried not to think about too much, and landed on a small flat area right next to the sea. (Just the sort of spot that someone might stand, letting the spray wash over them, excited by the novelty of so much water.) He tried not to think about it. At least his co-pilot had done a better job of landing than takeoff.

There was no sign of any other ships.

Rose evidently noticed this too, slumping in her seat, looking dejected. Then she seemed to get a hold of herself, forcing herself upright and putting on a determined expression, though it was more a mask than anything he’d ever worn.

“Come on. We can’t just sit here.”

He hated that she was right.

*****

Alcida-Auka did her best not to sigh when she saw _that_ ship again, coming in to land. The one that had brought the disagreeable girl to their island. Still, her people had their vows. They looked after the island and provided for any pilgrims who came in search of wisdom. Any of them. Within reason at least – vows were one thing, but some visitors had been utterly mad and far too dangerous to deal with; those had been left to their own devices as the Lanai retreated to safety. The girl could never be as bad as those, and perhaps she could learn wisdom eventually.

In the meantime, the Lanai would be perfectly hospitable. A meal for the village was already being prepared, so she instructed that extra amounts be added for their guests – if the girl was back, she was surely accompanied by that tall furred thing (who at least had considerably better manners).

But when their guests emerged from the path leading up from the sea, she recognised neither of them. Curious. They were both of the same species as their previous guest and the girl. One was tall, male, and dark-haired. A familiar device hung from his belt. Ah, yes. Many past visitors had carried such weapons. Another seeker of old wisdom. And if this one was mad, he seemed to have enough of a handle on his madness to not be a problem.

The other was shorter, female, but also dark-haired. Then Alcida-Auka noticed the staff she leant on. That girl’s staff. The grumbles around her told her that the others had noted it too. The short visitor seemed to interpret this as hostility to a potential threat, as she threw the staff away, to demonstrate she had no ill intent.

Well, at least she seemed to be less troublesome, based on that gesture alone.

The male seemed to have correctly deduced the reason for their consternation, pointing at the staff, and asking, “Rey?”

So, he knew the girl. Some of the others grumbled a little at this, feeling this boded ill for the behaviour of these newcomers, and that wouldn’t do. She moved forward to welcome them, inclining her head in welcome. She greeted them verbally as well, though she knew they would only follow her tone rather than her words. The male copied her body language, and after a moment so did the other visitor.

The others relaxed, the strangers having demonstrated at least some basic courtesy and not yet destroyed or damaged anything.

Then the man leaned forward, and opened his bag, showing the contents. The books! The sacred texts written so long ago and kept safe by her people, thought lost when the great uneti tree had been destroyed in that unfortunate lightning strike!

He said something to her, which she did not understand, never having concerned herself with the languages of any of the outsiders. She turned to her daughter, who had been one of those who had helped their last visitor learn the Lanai tongue, and had picked up some small amount of his own in return.

Alcida-Petra obediently translated without needing to be asked, _“He says that he is sure the girl meant to return them.”_

She very much doubted that, somehow, but what’s done is done, and at least someone treated knowledge with the appropriate respect. This was a good man, she thought.

Any further enquiry was interrupted by the female collapsing. Evidently her leaning on the staff had not been entirely a result of the effort of climbing. The male caught her before she could hit the ground, and carried her to a nearby bench, sitting her down.

That settled things. The strangers were friendly, the troublesome girl was not here, and the Lanai were being inhospitable to people in need of care. She barked a command to begin serving the meal. Bowls of fish stew, flavoured with herbs and accompanied by small loaves of bread, were filled and handed out.

After a few mouthfuls, the male paused to ask a question. Alcida-Petra responded, and a conversation begins between him, the female, Alcida-Petra, and the two others who had picked up some of the outsiders’ language. Occasionally the trio conferred amongst themselves on a particular translation, and Alcida-Auka worked out that he was asking after their most recent guests, and to recent events on the island, and they were explaining to him the damage to the uneti tree and the problems caused by the girl, introduced by the other visitor as his niece, which nobody had believed for a moment. This last part seemed to amuse him.

Having established a rapport, the participants introduced themselves in turn. The trio of translators each pointed at herself and spoke her name, then pointed at Alcida-Auka and introducing her, the female outsider followed, indicating herself and declaring, “Rowze Teeko.”

The male is more hesitant, but after a pause, says, “Ben Solo.”

This name is familiar and attracted curious muttering as those who knew it tried to place where they knew it from. It took Alcida-Auka a moment, but then she remembered.

She got to her feet and beckoned him excitedly. She could not remember the last time she had even been excitable. Probably when she was too young to form strong memories. But this was most curious. A clear instance of the will of the universe.

He got up and followed her, pausing to say something to the girl, who was attempting to rise. Since she sat back down again, he obviously told her to stay put and rest.

She led him to the hut that served as a storeroom for items left behind by guests. In its own way, it was as sacred as the temple or the tree. The possessions left by those who have gone before were not usually tampered with.

Possibly there had been occasions where the goods had been claimed – either by those who left them by mistake returning later to collect them, or heirs of those who had died here seeking some memento or meagre inheritance – but nobody had bothered to record such instances.

The bundle she needed was nearest the door - the last things to be placed here. From the out of the wrapping of coarsely woven sacking, she pulled a wooden box, with the name BEN SOLO carved into the lid.

His eyes widened in recognition. She nodded. Yes, this was fate.

He said something, Alcida-Petra, who had followed them, translated from the doorway. _“He says the man was his uncle.”_

She must have been clearly displaying her disbelief – the man who had left these thing here had introduced that girl as a niece of his – as he said something more, and her daughter’s translation was not needed to explain that he was insisting on the truth of his claim. She sensed he was sincere.

She nodded again. The course was clear. Wherever possible, the things left behind should be returned to their rightful owners. He had a claim on these things, and so they belonged to him. She pushed the bundle into his arms. He seemed reluctant at first, but relented, accepting it from her and sketching a small bow.

They returned to the gathering, and the man sat back down with his companion. After a brief conference as tasks were assigned for the afternoon, the Lanai melted away and went about their business. Strangers come and go, but the Lanai have things to do.

*****

He rejoined Rose on the stone bench, where she was just finishing another bowl of stew – their hosts having apparently decided that, as an injured person, she was deemed worthy of extra. She opened her mouth – probably to ask where he’d been – then her eyes moved to the bundle he was carrying, and she visibly rethought what she was going to say.

“Luke’s?”

He could only nod.

They sat for a while, watching a couple of Lanai putting the finishing touches on repairs to one of the huts.

“It looks like they’ve had to almost totally rebuild it,” she commented idly. “I wonder how it got damaged.”

“No idea. But I think Rey must have been involved somehow.”

There was another long silence. “So… are you going to open it?”

He wanted to open it about as much as he’d wanted to come here in the first place. But he knew he had to for the same reason: hope. Rey might have left something behind, something that had become mixed in with Luke’s possessions when the Lanai were tidying up after their last guests. And if she had, she might come back for it.

It was a slim hope at best. Rey hadn’t had much in the way of possessions, and after a lifetime of learning to live without, she probably wouldn’t trek across the galaxy for the sake of some knick-knack or other.

He attempted positivity. She might, if she was already planning on coming here. Which she _definitely_ would be, because where else would she go?

But if she was, wouldn’t she already be here? He really wasn’t good at this positivity thing. Oh, but wait! The Falcon was a very fast ship, famously so. Of course they’d arrived first.

He realised he hadn’t answered Rose’s question. “No. Maybe later.” _Maybe never._ “But not now.”

She didn’t argue. “So what now?”

Stop asking me questions like I know what I’m doing! “We wait. Give it a few days. See if anyone shows up or contacts the Falcon.”

Neither of them asked what they’d do if that didn’t happen, and in the silence doubts began to creep back in. He tried to find information to bolster his hopes. “Was anyone else absent from the base? What about spies, saboteurs? Surely you had those?”

“Oh and like the First Order didn’t?”

He simply rolled his eyes. “Fine. Probably. I don’t know. It wasn’t my department. I’m an engineer. The only comings and goings I ever noticed were of pilots- Oh!”

“Oh?” he prompted.

“Some pilots were sent out on a recruiting mission before we left D’Qar. Three X-wings and an A-wing. We haven’t heard from them since, and I think we were all fearing the worst. But maybe they just ran into some trouble and are laying low. They might be still out there.”

Privately, he agreed with the doubters. With this long an absence they were unlikely to be still alive. But his mother, and possibly others, had survived that attack somehow, so stranger things could happen.

Again he thought about reaching out to her. But then he looked down at the bundle at his feet. Luke’s things. Left behind by him so he could confront his nephew even though doing so would kill him. Which therefore meant it was all his fault in the eyes of the galaxy. Another death he would be responsible for. And while doing so he would have talked with his sister, probably to explain what a lost cause her son was.

“Any allies? Benefactors? Random people who once smiled at you in the street?” He really really hoped they found someone. Someone who would have some idea what to do, where to go. Because otherwise he’d actually have to make a decision, and that had never ended well for anyone involved.

She shook her head, and he sighed. “Well, nobody is or has been here, that’s for sure. We’ll wait here a few days, monitoring the comms. In the meantime, the Falcon could use some work.”

“I thought you said a few days. Not a few years.”

“Try decades, if you’re talking about getting the Falcon in decent condition. But I’d settle for basic repairs for now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Ben Solo Goes For A Walk


	7. In Which Ben Solo Goes For A Walk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artist's impression of Ben right now:  
> 

They got to work immediately. A few days was an optimistic timeframe for even ‘basic repairs’, with the Falcon, especially when it had gone for so long without even basic maintenance. Chewie had obviously tried his best, but there’s only so much you can do while the ship is in constant flight. Panels were rewired, bolts were tightened, fuses were replaced, supposed temporary fixes that had been implemented before he was born were replaced with something a little more durable, systems were checked, parts were upgraded as much as possible. After some discussion they put together a cloaking system to hide them from any First Order searches. He used his knowledge of the First Order’s tracking systems and the Falcon’s workings to implement a workaround, while Rose added her bafflers to hide traces of the ship’s emissions. Not enough to make it a true stealth vessel – they had no cloaking system so if they were caught in visual range they were screwed – but better than just painting a target on the ship.

No point waiting around for any survivors if you immediately doomed them all the first time you got near a First Order vessel.

The ship’s transponder was programmed with various identity codes to be broadcast as needed depending on who was scanning you, though most of them hadn’t been updated since the days of the Empire. He purged a few obsolete ones and made a note to try getting hold of some new ones that took into account the contemporary galactic situation – whatever that was right now.

They set the comms to pick up any Resistance and First Order channels that either of them knew of, as well as any public sources that might be useful, and he made sure the receiver still automatically scanned channels meant for distress signals and hailing messages. Artoo was assigned monitoring duty. Initially they had Artoo and BB-8 working in shifts, but the smaller droid had an un-droid-like tendency to get distracted, and had got on the wrong side of at least one of the ship’s droid brains (probably due to his disrespectful attitude, which, though Artoo shared, the older droid was better at knowing when to dial it down).

After three days, most of the more vital repairs were done, and he decided he needed a break. No contact had been received on any channels. Hopefully that was just down to this planet’s isolation and nothing more sinister.

He was going stir crazy in the Falcon. He was used to ship life, having spent years on star destroyers, but this was different. Every inch of this ship was designed to evoke memories of a life he’d tried to bury, a man he’d killed, and a wookie who’d been like a second father to him, who was now almost certainly dead as well. It was suffocating.

Standing on the ramp, breathing in the sea air, he looked up at the tall edifice that crowned the island. He would go up there, taking the broken lightsaber with him. Maybe if he sat in the first Jedi temple, holding something of Rey’s, something would happen to point him towards what he should do next.

A pretty dumb plan. But he was really just guessing here. He’d studied the Force – in some form or other – for most of his life. But Luke had left things out that he felt his nephew wasn’t ready for, and Snoke had kept dangling further training like a carrot on a string, always keeping his apprentice hungry enough to prevent him doing what all dark side apprentices end up attempting.

It was safe to say there were gaps. And also he was desperate. And the things he did know how to do with the Force sounded pretty ridiculous when you thought about them.

He didn’t see the point in going into the cave Rey had mentioned. He’d already searched for answers in the Dark, and look where it had gotten him.

After a moment’s thought, he picked up Rey’s staff as well – she’d used it more and for longer. (Rose didn’t need it as a crutch anymore – after a few days of sea air, whatever was in the stuff the Caretakers were feeding her, and plenty of meds, she was mostly recovered.) He also collected Luke’s personal effects. He still didn’t want to look inside, but every time he walked past the shelf where he’d put it, it seemed to pull his attention to it. Best to get it over with than have it sit malevolently in the corner forever. Even if he just cast it out of an airlock without looking at it he knew it would still somehow torment him.

Even after a few days here, leaving the ship and walking up the path was still a shock to the system. He’d spent so much of the past few years on ships, only making planetfall occasionally, and then never in areas of natural beauty. Worse, it triggered memories he’d long sought to bury – the house on Chandrilla, family outings, exploring new places where the Falcon had stopped for refuelling or repairs.

(If he set a blaster to stun, and fired it at his own head at point-blank range, would it knock all these thoughts out of his head?)

He forced them away, but it wasn’t just that. The whole island was imbued with positive Force energy and he felt smothered by it, it was so alien to him, after his determination to flee as far from the light as possible. Now it was like he’d stepped fully into it.

And the views were nice. The rolling, ever-changing sea spread out around them, looking vast and endless and empty, and if you hadn’t seen the planet from space, you’d think this was all there was. Insects buzzed through the vivid green grass. Animal calls floated to them on the soft breeze. And everywhere there were porgs. So many porgs.

It calmed him, but the calmness felt weird.

He passed a few of the island’s custodians and nodded at them. They were small and seemed harmless, but then so was Rey and he had the scars to prove otherwise. Besides, they had sharp knives, superior numbers, and knew the terrain much better than him. Best to be polite.

Initially he’d been surprised the island had some form of sentient life, but he supposes he shouldn’t have been. The sort of people mad, determined and desperate enough to make it to this corner of the galaxy were the sort of people least likely to be able to even dress themselves without help. Some of those piles of possessions in that hut had probably belonged to people who had walked off the edge of a cliff in broad daylight.

He’d initiated conversation in the hope that they had some sort of contact with the rest of the galaxy, or had been left instructions by Luke to the effect that, ‘Oh hey, by the way my sister and her friends might drop by!’, but no.

They had accepted him easily enough, which added to the feeling of weirdness, like a fundamental law of the universe had been broken. The galaxy really had gone wrong without Rey in it. (No. No, no, no! She was alive. She had to be. He would find her.) Perhaps it was just that he had returned the books they thought were lost.

He would entice their ire soon enough, he was sure. He always did, somehow. He would say something, do something, to piss them off, make them regret any faith they had in him, or insist they’d always known something was up, that they’d known he was bad from the start.

The fact that it seemed some of their good nature was due to his family – particularly to a man who had thought he was monstrous enough to kill in his sleep – just made it more likely.

He hadn’t been sure introducing himself was the best idea. He’d been leaning towards giving his name as Kylo. If Rose was anything to go by, the story of his fall to the Dark Side and transformation into Kylo Ren was patchy at best as far as the galaxy at large was concerned. But here was a different story. Cut off as they were they would not have heard of the First Order’s monstrous attack dog, and Luke had left before his renaming might have reached any others’ ears. And he doubted the Lanai had listened much to Rey, as much as they seemed to dislike her. If anything his birth name would cause the most issues – Luke had surely shared tales of his awful nephew.

But when he’d opened his mouth, “Ben Solo” had slipped out, and at first, the chattering consternation this awoke seemed to confirm his fears, but then their leader had jumped up and beckoned him to follow her.

It seemed that Luke had said nothing about him. They’d seen his name before though. On a small wooden box his uncle had kept. One that he’d recognised.

Shocked by the sight, and feeling the need to contribute something so as not to gape like an idiot, he’d blurted out that Luke had been his uncle. Which of course got him saddled with the whole bundle of whatever junk his uncle had lugged with him into hiding. He’d wanted to hand the bundle back and withdraw his claim to his family. But doing so would mean having to attempt to awkwardly explain what a disaster his family is. (Was?)

He supposed they were glad to be able to hand some of the detritus off to someone. The hut had been stacked with other bundles from other guests, none of whom had clearly had black sheep nephews show up to collect their stuff.

So here he was, standing at the very peak of the island, in a small room overlooking the sea, with a small pool behind him. (It clearly hadn’t been meant as a pool at all – simply too shallow to be anything other than a mosaic – but make a depression in the floor of a space that was open to the elements and, well, a pool is what you get.)

He sat down near the opening, wanting to take in the view a little, but not wanting to go outside and sit on a small ledge while opening a bundle of unknown items packed in an unknown fashion that could potentially fall before he could even reach out with the Force to catch them.

If anything was going to leave this balcony it was going to be thrown with intent.

The first item he pulled out was, of course, the item he’d been shown. He had never expected to see that box again. It had held his calligraphy tools – items for one of the few pastimes that gave him some peace that he’d been allowed to do (training to become a pilot had been right out – far too dangerous and would only get in the way of his mother’s ambition for him to be a Jedi), and among the few possessions he’d brought with him to the Academy.

He’d kept his nephew’s calligraphy set. Like a, what? A trophy?

He opened the box warily, not sure what to expect, or even to expect anything at all (he might simply have looted the box to store junk in and it might contain interesting-looking pebbles from the beach). But what he saw amazed him.

Not only did it contain his tools, but it contained items that hadn’t been in there when last he’d seen it. On that fateful night, the box had simply contained some rolls of unused paper, a spare ink bottle, and a few less-used pens.

But in the box was also the pen holder that he knew had been on the table in his hut (he can still see his lightsaber knocking it over as it flies into his hand so he can defend himself from attack), and a few sheets of paper with writing already on, crumpled, as if they’d been crushed by a heavy and uneven weight…

Luke had had to move rubble and search through the ruined hut to find this stuff, had gathered it all and placed it in the box.

Why?

He had no answers for himself, so he set the box aside for now, continuing to look through what his attempted murderer had left behind. A compass, that he recognised. A pendant of some kind, that he did not. A few other things, none of which seemed important enough for his uncle to have hung on to, but perhaps they had a value he couldn’t see.

Underneath those, just clothes. And those he had no use for, however well-kept they were. He couldn’t wear his current outfit constantly forever, so he would need to obtain new clothes at some point. And he accepted that people tended to make snap judgements about Force users who wore black, and could therefore acknowledge the potential value in considering other colours for his wardrobe. Maybe.

But he would not be caught dead in beige - or any similar colours.

He thought about throwing them over the edge… But Rey liked - or at least didn’t hate - beige, and reusing old things. The thought of her yelling at him for the waste was enough to stop him.

Maybe he could donate them to the porgs for nesting materials. (They’d had no luck removing them from the Falcon, no sooner had they shooed off a flock, they’d return, with friends. He could probably put forth some effort and make sure they stayed off – a few good Force Pushes ought to do it – but every time he looked into a pair of big black eyes he lost the will to go through with it. He’d caught Rose obtaining fish to store for them, and had said nothing. Mainly because he’d been doing the same thing.)

He poked at the clothing, in the vague hope that there was something in shades other than beige or brown, but no. Luke had obviously got the inspiration for that dark blue robe from his imagination.

Something rolled out from under the fabric, and he jumped back. Stupidly, as it wasn’t like a lightsaber could harm him without anyone around to ignite it. But the memory of that green glow that had shown up night after night in his nightmares was enough to send him sprawling back into the thankfully-shallow pond.

The cold water helped snap him out of his panic, and he fought to calm himself. He picked it up, ignoring the irrational twinge of fear. The hilt had been damaged somehow, but not as if it had been in a fight; it looked sustained and deliberate, as if Luke had tried to destroy the thing, but given up.

Had he gone fully into the pacifist mindset in his exile? Eschewing all weapons? Had he cast blame on it for his murder attempt? Whatever the reason, he must have changed his mind and opted to keep it – if he’d really wanted rid of it he would have thrown it in the sea.

Putting it before him, he reached into his bag and pulled out the two halves of Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber, and laid them down next to it. Then, after a moment’s pause, he removed his own from his belt, and put that down too.

If Force Ghosts really existed, as Luke had claimed they did, they would surely be shaking their heads around him right now, seeing these lightsabers as evidence of the downfall of the art of lightsaber construction.

Anakin Skywalker’s, built at the height of Jedi power in the galaxy, made by a Jedi Knight, using the best materials available, with expert guidance, and knowledge of exactly what lightsabers should be like. Meant to be, thanks to the Jedi’s pacifist ethos, more of a decorative item than a weapon (however effective a weapon it might be). As a result, sleek, elegant, perfectly designed.

Luke’s, made a few decades later when the Jedi were already a distant memory, put together by a farmboy, using whatever materials he could gather, based on scribbled instructions left behind by a mentor he’d barely known and a memory of handling the previous item - the one lightsaber he’d ever had the chance to closely examine in his life, out of a handful that he’d even seen. As a result, a functional tool created from brutally practical components that were easy to replace, like everything else he’d built in his life, and meant for use in battle. Still a lightsaber, but a tool, rather than a symbol.

His, made another few decades later, another layer removed, made by an apprentice to the farmboy, now older but still guessing about the Force, using practical but high-quality tools, but then hastily customised as a result of needing to channel the energy of a now-unstable crystal, based on a childhood of having to help with whatever latest repair was necessary to keep the Falcon running, and using a design recalled from a description given by Luke in what had presumably been meant as a warning against handling Dark Side items. Definitely not elegant, and far too harsh to be referred to even as a tool. A weapon. Like its wielder.

Part of him wanted to cringe at how far removed his own hilt was from the oldest, but he angrily fought that back. He’d done an excellent job given the circumstances, available tools and limited instruction. This was his. He’d built it and maintained it and kept it working and even with a damaged crystal. That had taken skill and a great deal of problem-solving, and no help.

He’d been lucky to even get a kyber crystal in the first place. Saying those things were rare was putting it mildly. It had been Chewie who’d found it, sold by a merchant dealing in trinkets. He’d known exactly what it was (but had refused to say where he’d become an expert in Force relics) and had bought it for his young nephew. He’d treasured the gift as one of the few instances where it seemed like his abilities were worthy of celebration rather than shame.

Snoke would probably have been able to acquire a replacement after he’d damaged it while bleeding the thing, but he’d never asked. He’d told himself it was simply that he hadn’t wanted to face the derision, humiliation, and likely physical pain that would be visited on him as punishment.

Looking at all three lightsabers arrayed before him, in various states of disrepair (one completely shattered and broken, one with a cracked crystal but a functional hilt, one with a whole crystal but with some minor damage to the hilt), he considered them. He’d assumed the legacy lightsaber had been damaged beyond repair. But perhaps not – the crystals were semi-sentient, and perhaps they could be healed, just like the people they bonded with.

He then lay Rey’s staff down in front of them and surveyed this scene. An idea beginning to form. He had two kyber crystals at his disposal - both belonging to people far too dead to object to their appropriation - and a person who had trained on and favoured a double-ended weapon. But he knew from experience that she could also happily wield a single blade with great efficiency, should one crystal prove unsalvageable.

Yes. If he made her a new lightsaber, she would come back. She would. And everything would be fine.

There was the small matter of the necessity of a crystal needing to be bonded to the wielder, and the potential wielder was… (he hopefully craned his neck to check the sky, just in case…) not here. But hopefully the bond would count for something here. He was pretty much making this up as he went along.

If he was honest with himself, he always had been.

He moved the staff and his own lightsaber aside – the two Skywalker lightsabers were the focus for now. First, the older of the pair. Luke’s blade was in good working order and with an intact crystal, and had had one careful-ish owner for its lifetime. It was therefore more of a known quantity. Whereas Anakin’s was in pieces and had passed through more hands over the years than the contents of a Jawa’s sandcrawler.

Raising his hands, he concentrated, and the broken pieces floated up before him, then the hilt opened up, first the outer casing and then the component parts separating and drifting apart. He held his palms out and the halves of the crystal each landed in one, while everything else fell gently to land on the ground.

He cupped his hands together, allowing the halves of the crystal to rest against each other in the bottom of the bowl he’d created. Right, this should be straightforward enough. Just do the opposite of what he’d done when he’d bled his own crystal. And try not to think of how he’d fucked that up.

Okay, this was for Rey, so he closed his eyes and focused on her. The harsh warmth of her homeworld, and the more soothing warmth of her faith in him that he’d done nothing to deserve. Her ferocity and courage and determination. Her joy at simple things like trees and rain. Her innocence despite being so worldweary. The way she’d stood before Snoke with fire in her eyes. The look in her eyes as she’d said his name in that turbolift. The sensation of touching her hand from across the galaxy.

He doesn’t need to look at the crystal in his hands to know it had worked, but he does anyway, because he couldn’t believe it had actually worked. The crystal was whole again. It was hard to say if it had taken on a new colour in the bright afternoon sunlight. But he didn’t care, so long as it wasn’t red, which wouldn’t fit her at all (well, maybe a little), but he was sure it’d be obvious if that had happened.

He put the newly-healed crystal to one side, letting it sit in the pool, figuring it couldn’t hurt.

He repeated the process with Luke’s lightsaber, taking it apart, removing the crystal, setting the parts aside, then cupping the crystal in his hands and thinking really hard about Rey.

Setting this one in the water next to the first, he glanced through the parts now scattered in front of him, checking to see if there was anything useful or if it was all good for nothing but scrap. Most of Anakin’s saber fell into the latter category, though there were a few things that had been away from the midpoint where most of the heat had been generated and damage done. Luke's was fine. Assessment made, he threw them all in his bag to be sorted properly back on the Falcon, along with Luke’s things. Removing the crystals from the water, he placed them in a small pouch in the bag.

Pausing a moment, he looked down at his own lightsaber. Now that he knew it was possible to heal a crystal, perhaps he should repair his own, maybe even un-bleed it, if he could, if that was possible… No, he didn’t deserve that. That would be for someone who was good and whole. Not him. He was not a good person. Rey was right – he was a monster. He’d healed those crystals to be as pure and perfect as her. But he was none of those things.

Then he got to his feet, pulled Rey’s staff to him, and set off back down the hill

This part was done; the next stage required a workbench and some tools.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- A note for those who don't read the comics - the bit about Ben finding out about the crossguard lightsaber design from Luke is not so much a headcanon as it is speculation based on things seen in canon. Luke has seen a lightsaber (or to be more precise, one of the lightsabers out of a matching pair) that matches the design, complete with clearly unstable blade. And later joined forces with the smuggler who acquired & sold it, so would've been able to get more information on its provenance. Even if he'd only mentioned some of that to Ben, it would've been more than enough for him to go on in order to research it himself. That can't be a coincidence - they knew what they were doing with that one.
> 
> \- The source of Ben Solo's kyber crystal is a beautifully depressing little headcanon of mine. That Han found it (because Han totally _would_ accidentally find a kyber crystal)  & gave it to his Force-sensitive son when he was a kid in an attempt to connect to him, though it didn't quite work because he's an idiot who is still confused by the whole Force thing so there were distinctly mixed signals. I've changed it to Chewie here though, as I feel like he hasn't had much of a chance to shine in this fic & he deserves a seat in a first class carriage on the Ben Solo Pain Train too.
> 
>  
> 
> Next chapter: Engineering Happens, & An Execution Takes Place


	8. In Which Engineering Happens, & An Execution Takes Place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title for this chapter was just going to be 'In Which Engineering Happens', in my tradition of technically-accurate-but-unhelpfully-random titles, but I thought it best to give some sort of heads up that there is character death in this chapter. I've not really made a secret about how I would be killing off Leia, but on the off chance you missed it, this is your final warning - Leia will be dead by the end of this chapter (though she will return in Force Ghost form before her physical body is even cold). Don't say I didn't warn you.

Rose was half jammed inside a panel, trying to make some tweaks to the com system. They were so far off the map that they weren’t getting anything out here, and she was desperate for news. Did the galaxy know what was going on? Did they know the Resistance was gone now? If Leia was alive as Ky- Ben claimed, where was she? Had anyone else survived? Was the First Order invading anywhere? Was anyone mounting a resistance of their own?

Probably the Twi’leks were. The Free Ryloth movement had been running continuously for a few generations now and had probably only been considered on temporary hiatus while the New Republic was in operation. Though as their name suggested, they had a much narrower focus to their activities.

It was just frustrating. This place was a great place to hide out and recuperate without worry of discovery, and if any survivors were looking for a hiding place, this was top of the list. But its isolation made it useless as any kind of base to keep track of things. There were a few Outer Rim systems that were near enough that the Falcon would easily be able to pick up long range messages and broadcasts that were either originated from or relayed through their equipment, but they were the sort of nowhere places that nobody cared enough about to merit long range anything.

So she’d spent the last few hours trying to boost their comms range to pick up more short range broadcasts, or reach a relay, anything to get news, or communication with an ally, or failing that, a terrible holodrama to take her mind off reality for a bit. Anything.

Her possibly-no-longer-evil companion had gone off wandering the island, not that there seemed to be much to explore (as far as she could see – she was pretty much recovered – re-recovered? – now, but there still seemed to be far too much uphill to this place for her liking, so she’d restricted herself to some of the more low-lying areas), but maybe the place was full of secrets to anyone who had Force powers. Whatever he was doing, she was fine with him being elsewhere. He hadn’t tried to kill her yet (definite plus), and had actually done some good work (she’d never imagined that Kylo Ren had any kind of mechanical engineering skills - most of the pilots she’d met seemed to assume their starfighters flew on magic alone and had no idea of the work that went into maintaining them. Though she supposed in his case he knew exactly what magic could and could not do...). But it still felt weird being crammed together on a ship with him, and conversations were hard as she had no idea what to say besides basic greetings and discussions on what needed to be fixed.

She’d never been very good at social skills anyway – that had been Pae-Pae’s thing – but this was worse, because none of the usual conversation starters helped. ‘So, killed anyone I know?’ ‘What was your childhood like (before you disappointed and betrayed your whole family)?’ ‘What are your hobbies (aside from galactic conquest)?’

There were some things they both agreed on: That Rey was awesome, that the Falcon was a miracle of engineering (in that Rose was an actual engineer and the only explanation she had for how it was still flying was that it was a miracle), and that Hux was The Worst. But Rey was a painful topic, the Falcon was so full of memories that it was a minefield of a subject, and there was only so much mileage you could get out of bitching about Hux. Especially as it generally led you to the depressing realisation that the bastard might actually have won.

She had tried to fill the awkward silences by telling him about her own life and family. Which had started out cheerful but got more and more depressing as it was basically, ‘Everything was fine, and then the First Order invaded, and now my home is rubble and my family is all dead, and so are my friends, and by the way you’re kinda responsible for that…’.

So an awkward silence had become a series of awkward and depressing stories, which had culminated in her feeling guilty for reminding him that he bore some responsibility for the First Order’s shit (even if Snoke had been in charge for most of it), and then feeling confused by that, because he _should_ have his nose rubbed in what he’d been associated with, damn it.

She crawled out of the panel, standing and stretching. Looking at the chrono, she saw she’d worked for longer than she’d realised; if she’d been at it for any longer BB-8 would have rolled by nagging her to take a break.

She slouched into the main hold and made herself a caf from the machine (which was the only thing on the ship that worked consistently). Then stuck her head into the cockpit to check on Artoo and to tell him her modifications were finished.

BB-8 was with him, the two of them beeping at each other in a conversation far too fast for human ears to follow. She thought maybe Artoo was trying to reassure BB-8; the smaller droid had been getting increasingly antsy after several days with no news, and was shifting back and forth, clearly still distressed, while Artoo’s beeps had what she felt was a reassuring tone. They paused when they saw her and beeped in acknowledgement of her news, before resuming their discussion.

She turned and headed back into the hold, BB-8 following, beeping enquiries about her physical status. At this point they should reassign him as a medidroid.

She had to move a porg over to give her space to sit down. They’d tried shooing them off the ship, but they kept creeping back in. If she was honest, neither of them seemed to be trying particularly hard. (In fact, she herself had procured some dried fish and other stuff that she’d seen the porgs on the island eating, and when she’d gone to stash it in one of the compartments throughout the ship – having gotten Artoo to show her where they all were – found that someone else had already hoarded an impressive supply.)

Speaking of him, he chose that moment to wander in, also grabbing a caf and sitting down (though he moved the occupying porg aside without touching it). BB-8 gave a half-hearted beep in greeting – he didn’t seem any more sure how to treat the guy than she did.

She wondered if she should ask what he’d been doing. That was what a friend would do. But they weren’t friends. And while she knew plenty about him, it was all about how dangerous he was and to stay far away. Nothing that told her whether he appreciated someone asking after him. It was probably in an intelligence file somewhere. _Kylo Ren: Powerful Force user, will kill you as soon as look at you, do not ask him how his day has gone until he has had at least 2 cups of caf, preferably 3 just to be on the safe side._

She’d just decided to kriffing ask him already (it was stupid sitting there in silence and it was an opportunity to make small talk that was reasonably safe), when he answered her own question by emptying the contents of the bag onto the table. She recognised the casing from Rey’s broken saber; he’d taken it apart.

It soon became clear that there was more than one lightsaber hilt on the table. Where had- Ah! She saw the bundle he’d put to one side, which he’d taken it with him on his walk to nowhere in particular; he must have looked through it and found Luke’s lightsaber.

She felt a flash of anger that he’d taken apart a fully working lightsaber, but fought it back. Maybe it hadn’t been working, and it wasn’t as if its owner was using it anymore. She guessed he must know what he was doing.

What he was doing right now, was sorting the components into piles. As she watched, it became obvious that he was dividing them based on what could be reused and what was scrap.

He silently indicated the pile he’d deemed scrap, and she realised with excitement that he was offering her the chance to offer a second opinion before discarding! The opportunity to salvage parts from lightsabers was amazing, and any awkwardness was forgotten.

Not that there was much. His assessment was pretty much spot on. The pile was mostly stuff from Rey’s broken saber, too badly damaged to be good for anything. Mostly, anyway. There were a few short lengths of wire that she could trim the burnt ends off and use for patching stuff. Not super safe or ideal, but better than nothing in a pinch, until a better fix could be afforded. Mr. First Order was probably used to infinite supplies of parts, but the Resistance had rarely been that lucky.

Selections made, she chucked the rest in a nearby empty crate. They could go in the trash later. (Or sit there forever, forgotten, until they somehow eventually because useful – judging by the clutter taking up the ship, she suspected this was how Han had done things.)

She turned back to watch him. He hadn’t put the working parts aside, and instead had them laid out in front of him, examining them. Then he waved a hand and a box of parts moved towards him. (The novelty of that still hadn’t quite worn off yet. The casual use of the Force like this is somehow more impressive than big displays of power. How amazing would it be able to just call things into your hand when you needed them? So much time saved working on tricky jobs.)

One of his main projects while they’d been here was organising everything from whatever chaotic system Han had used to one that meant they could find things when needed, and she saw that this was a box he’d designated for small electrical repairs.

She expected him to place the newly-scavenged parts in the box for future use, but instead he rifled through the contents, pulling out items. Then another wave of his hand brought a toolbox containing tools for smaller, more intricate tasks.

It was when he picked up a small pouch that she’d ignored before and emptied two crystals onto his palm, that it occurred to her what was happening.

He was going to build a lightsaber! Right there! In front of her! She watched in rapt excitement, trying not to squeal or make any other embarrassing noises. Or embarrassing faces. Anything that would make her look enough of an idiot to be banished from his presence. This was something very few people had ever got to see even when the Jedi order was at its height. This was an opportunity so amazing that it’d never occurred to her to dream about it. And she was witnessing it.

Both cups of caf went cold as she watched him work. Her immediate reaction (which she felt guilty over) was how distinctly unmystical it was. He selected components and attached wires like it was any other engineering project. It was somehow both a let-down, while also being fascinating in its mundanity. The legendary mystic weapons were made the same way any other mechanical device was.

Mostly anyway, she thought, as he arranged each of the crystals next to the housing he’d built for them. Two separate pieces, she noticed, wondering what that meant. Two sabers? One extra powerful one? Something else entirely?

Then he was suddenly pulling Rey’s staff to him, and she leant forwards, curious about why that was needed… only to throw herself back with a muffled squeak as he unleashed his own lightsaber. So far he hadn’t tried to hurt her, but seeing that thing, flickering right in front of her face was terrifying.

She was starting to rethink the wonders of this ringside seat, and then suddenly the staff was floating, and the red blade was moving, and she shut her eyes and tried to merge with her seat as it whirred and buzzed barely feet from her face… and then all was still again.

Cautiously, she opened her eyes, pleasantly surprised to find herself still not dead (woo hoo), to see the staff in pieces in front of him. She wanted to ask what the hell he was doing destroying Rey’s staff like that. Even if she was dead, it’d be wrong. _Especially_ if she was dead. (But she’s not. She’s _not_.) But she does have some survival instinct, and it tells her that it would probably be a bad idea to ask the crazy Force user not to wreck his girlfriend’s stuff. And maybe was part of the process. Or something.

So she watched, instead, as the still-floating staff, now suspended in pieces, separated, some pieces falling to the floor, while two drifted down to rest on the table. Noticing that they were hollow and tubular, she realised where he was going with this, and leaned forward again despite the risk of getting her face sliced off if he decided to chop any more things up and forgot she was there, watching closely as he began cutting away further at the pieces to make them usable as casings. Thankfully for her sanity – what remained of it, anyway – and her face, he switched to a more standard tool for this precise cutting.

Her desire for more magical construction methods was appeased when he lifted his hand and flexed his fingers, and the components of one saber floated up and drifted together, the components piecing themselves together and moving into place in their new housing, which locked around them. She wasn’t sure if that was a normal part of the process, or just a necessity brought on by the awkwardness of using the staff rather than something designed to be moulded, or a mixture of both those things. Then he pulled out a welding torch and goggles, and sealed it all together.

There’s a weird sort of pleasure in knowing that even the Force couldn’t replace a welding torch.

There was some more work, calibration, tweaks, tightening things here and there. Then he repeated the process on the other one. And there they were: two lightsabers. She was currently in the same room as more lightsabers than she’d ever thought existed in the galaxy, objects she’d once thought only showed up in stories and history holos.

He didn’t seem finished yet though, fiddling around with the bases of the saber hilts. They look completed to her though, and she wondered if this was just tweaking things for the sake of it. She’d met enough techs who could never accept when a job was finished and just kept fine-tuning until the item was physically snatched away from them and they were restrained from pursuing it.

Then he just slotted the ends together, and they merged to become one object. Ah! So, a double-ended blade, which could be taken apart! She’d heard stories of lightsabers with two blades, but had always rolled her eyes, dismissing them as exaggerations by people who had to embellish their stories and add novelty to every little thing under the impression that this made things more exciting.

Considering how things had gone for her recently, she should probably be less dismissive of ridiculously-impossible elements of childhood stories. Including the one about the magic pink lizard that granted wishes.

Then he just sat there, looking at it like he’s suddenly not sure if this was a good idea. He does so for long enough that her impatience overrode her common sense, and she demanded, “So, aren’t you going to turn it on?”

This earned her a glare, which has happened so often now that she just rolled her eyes. By his standards (at least as far as she’d experienced) this glare was practically a warm smile.

“It’s not for me!”

“Then who is it for then?”

“Rey.”

Oh. Oh yeah. Well, that explained why he’d thought it remotely acceptable to use her staff, though Rey might not accept that as an excuse. And also why he was making one in the first place when he had his own and Rose would probably slice her own face off if she tried to wield one.

Still, she had sat here watching an actual lightsaber being made! She damn well wanted to see what it looked like.

“Shouldn’t you at least test it first, before giving it to her? Make sure it actually works?”

“I know what I’m doing!”

“So how’d your lightsaber end up looking like that? Because I heard that the crystal is completely fu-”

OK, now _that_ was a glare.

Still, her nagging worked and, holding it out in front of him, he thumbed one of the activator switches. A perfect jet of soft yellow streamed out in a solid, clear blade. Then he flicked the other, and she watched transfixed as a matching blade emerged.

He got up, moving to the middle of the room for some space, and began slashing with each end, before twirling it, only to drop it. Thankfully some sort of failsafe kicked in, or maybe he had enough presence of mind to turn them off with the Force, but the blades deactivated before it hit the floor.

She couldn’t help herself – she laughed. Maybe it was the wondrous experience of getting to see a legendary weapon made right in front of her. Maybe it was the after effects of the adrenaline high that had kicked in when he’d unleashed his own blade. Maybe she’d finally gone mad. Maybe it was the picture of Kylo Ren, badass space villain, fucking up like a kid showing off on their new swoop bike only to immediately crash it. Whatever the reason, she started giggling hysterically.

This – predictably – earned her yet another glare, which just made her laugh harder at how insane her life has gotten that a pissed off Kylo kriffing Ren isn’t scary anymore. How has she reached this point, that the biggest threat she feels from him is the risk that she might rupture one of her injuries from laughing too hard?

Next thing she knew, a splash of something covered her; her forgotten and mercifully-cold cup of caf.

Incensed, she grabbed his own cup and flung it at him, cup and all, not really thinking, because a guy who could stop blaster bolts in mid-air could easily catch a thrown object chucked by a cranky technician.

Only she obviously took him by surprise, as it hit him right in the face, the liquid splattering all over him. He grabbed the empty cup and hurled it back, and it was her that dodged (though she thought that was more luck than coordination and fast reflexes).

She poked her tongue out at him. After a pause in which he seemed to be trying to figure out how he should react, he poked his out in return.

From the corner, came a drawn out bleep that sounded a lot like a mechanical sigh.

*****

After they’d showered (separately, of course, because otherwise that would just make things awkward) and gotten new cups of caf (to be drunk this time, not thrown), she felt bold enough to pepper him with questions about lightsabers, now that she’d determined that the worst thing he would do to her was pour beverages on her – though she steered clear of anything relating to the crystal in his weapon, seeing as the caf was hot this time.

He actually seemed keen to talk, and more than happy to expound on the topic, and suddenly it was way easier to believe he was Ben Solo, Maker of Incredibly Poor Life Choices, rather than Kylo Ren, Irredeemable Monster.

Eventually the conversation turned to her own mechanical expertise, and she mentioned her project to boost the com system.

“It would still be a long shot, this far out, but if we could just connect to something, anything that might tell us what’s going on in the rest of the galaxy, give us an idea what the First Order are doing. Of course, if they’ve taken over all the remotely nearby systems and are jamming or have cut off communication, then it won’t make any difference.”

He shook his head. “Even if they were jamming, they wouldn’t block their own frequencies, so we’d still be able to pick something up.”

“But we don’t know how to access their- Oh. Right.”

“I’ve already set the ship to scan a couple of likely frequencies. Just the more relevant ones. Any channels for communication between TIE fighters for instance – both ship-to-ship and squadron-to-squadron, because they’d be deployed in any engagement, or if they were looking for fugitives. Being able to listen to any orders given by a star destroyer to its TIEs would be even more useful, but those vary and I can’t possibly anticipate which might be useful.” He shrugged. “And any ships I did know the channels for wouldn’t be stuck patrolling the middle of nowhere anyway.”

“Oooh, look at Mr Big Shot.” He snorted, refusing to dignify her jibe with an answer. “Of course, there’s another issue we’re forgetting – whether the com system is even working. Nothing seemed obviously wrong, but if some component is faulty and not showing up as broken, my fix would be about as useful as improving the fuel efficiency on a speeder with broken repulsors.”

“No, it works. I managed to pick something up.”

What?! “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“No point. It was just an old beacon. Some ship repair firm shelled out enough credits to pay for a beacon advertising their services to passing traffic, but obviously were too cheap to pay for a quality one that would stay in its assigned orbit. It’s drifted off course far enough that the Falcon picked it up all the way out here. Faint and with a lot of interference, but there.”

“Well that’s something. If we could just find out what’s going on...”

As if on cue, there was a frantic beeping from the corridor leading to the cockpit. Artoo rolled in at such speed that he was unable to stop in time, colliding with a crate and being bounced back into the corridor again, wailing madly the whole time.

It was impossible to make out what exactly he was saying, but neither of them bothered asking him to slow down or turned to BB-8 for a translation. His distress was so obvious that no translation was necessary, and whatever was going on, it was too urgent to stop and wait.

*****

The astromech was going insane. Whatever was going on, it was bad. The only word he could make out of the babble was ‘HoloNet’ so he brought up the holoprojector on the technical station. And immediately regretted it when an image of the last person he wanted to see shimmered into view.

“People of the galaxy!” blared Hux’s voice through the speakers, in a tone which he presumably thought was authoritative but sounded whiny. “You will bow before the might and glory of the First Order.”

Hux was at least smart enough to realise that any elaborate outfits would make him look utterly ridiculous and had simply upgraded his outfit to a snazzier version of his usual uniform, adding some gold braid and a cape.

He realised he had zoned out and resumed listening, doubting he’d missed anything important – Hux was never good at getting straight to the point.

“We have triumphed. Your worthless Senate is gone, and now so is the pathetic Resistance which has been thoroughly crushed after its futile flailing against us! Look, and see its end!”

The camera cut to a shot of his mother, looking much older than he remembered her, and with visible cuts and bruises that she’d clearly acquired in the recent battle. The glare was exactly the same though. She was flanked by stormtroopers who seemed to be holding her upright as much as guarding against her fleeing.

Hux launched into another rambling, screechy speech, and he tuned it out, instead sending out his senses across the galaxy, reaching for his mother. He found her, though her Force signature was dulled; he suspected she’d been drugged in order to prevent any sort of dramatic gesture that might ruin Hux’s little display.

He tried to reach her, to send some sort of message or enquiry, but just then an extra loud squawk from Hux and a roar from the gathered ranks of troops brought him back to himself.

Leia was shoved forward by her guards, who then stepped back a little, standing in a rough semicircle ready to catch her if she ran or fell.

“Any last words?” His blood ran cold. Hux’s histrionics about the death of the Resistance weren’t simply metaphor. It should have been obvious. _Of course_ the First Order was going to kill her! There was no reason to keep her alive – there was nobody to pay a ransom for her (as far as anyone knew), no need for a hostage to intimidate a recalcitrant Senate, no information she could be tortured into providing that was still relevant. She had nothing they valued. Worse, she had something they disliked – she was a symbol, a figurehead. The whole galaxy knew who she was, knew her story. She represented hope, and that couldn’t be allowed.

Despite whatever they’d dosed her with, her voice came clear and strong. “The Resistance is not dead.”

Hux laughed. “It is now.”

Then he drew his blaster, pointed it, and fired.

It was like he’d been hit by some sort of pulse weapon. His head filled with static, his body paralysed. It was almost like the way the world went during his meetings with Rey, the way everything seemed to fade. But this was far worse. Like the world was dead, rather than distant. And he was alone.

Why had he not reached out to her, when he had the chance? Why had he been so stubborn? Why had it not occurred to him that the most obvious explanation for her being alive even after a devastating attack from which there was no sign anybody had escaped was that she’d been captured?

He’d simply taken for granted that she’d always be there, that he could put off talking to her because it was inevitable he’d have to confront her (and by extension, what he’d done to hurt her), so there was no rush. And he’d blindly assumed that she’d always evade danger, even though if she was impossible to capture then his parents wouldn’t have met in the first place.

Even after he came back to himself, he couldn’t do much except stare at the images in front of him, of stormtroopers marching in formation while squadrons of TIEs flew overhead, Hux determined to make it clear who was in charge now. Beside him he sensed Rose doing the same.

A soft voice came from next to him. “They only killed her.”

He turned to her, ready to snarl at her dismissive words, and then he caught her face, and realised what she meant. Only one execution had taken place. They’d only killed Leia. Nobody else was up on that platform meeting their end at the point of a blaster, or axe, or any number of other methods if Hux felt like providing some variety.

That should have been reassuring, but it was the opposite. It was hard to imagine Hux passing up the opportunity to maximise the impact of his show.

FN-2187 should have been dragged forward to show how the First Order viewed anyone who betrays them. That pilot, Dameron, had appeared in enough propaganda holos to make him one of the Resistance’s more recognisable faces and a perfect representation of everyone’s mental image of what a rebel hero looked like - and a lesson in how they would end up. Chewie, famed throughout the galaxy as a war hero (and one who hadn’t since been tainted by being outed as having a Sith in the family), proof that such things meant nothing to the First Order.

Rey, the last Jedi in the galaxy, a symbol of hope and possessor of great power, and a demonstration that this power was not enough to prevail against the First Order.

If any of them had survived, they would certainly be up there. Along with anyone else the First Order had captured alive, unknowns achieving galactic fame in the worst way possible.

The fact that none of them were there meant that they were dead already. All of them.

All gone.

He got up, hurling himself blindly through the ship, not even sure where he was going, just wanting to get away from the still-playing holo, until he arrived in the cockpit. Leaning on the back of the pilot’s seat and looking through the viewport, he was actually stunned to see the island still there, beautiful and green, the sea still churning and throwing up spray as it hits the rocks by the Falcon. Nothing had changed.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the co-pilot’s chair, empty. He’d never imagined anyone else would sit there. The wookie had always been around, and their lifespans were so long, that when he’d imagined his life as a daring pilot travelling the galaxy, even in the versions where he’d acknowledged that his father might not always be there, Chewie would be.

Only now he wasn’t. The First Order had taken him. As it had taken Rey, and his mother. And his father too, him foolishly believing in the promises of Snoke, that he must commit himself to the cause and cement his loyalty by sacrificing a man who really hadn’t meant to be a bad father, just confused a how to raise a son with abilities that, a few years before, he’d dismissed as bantha shit even while his future brother-in-law and future father-in-law demonstrated them right in front of him. How had he ever thought it was the right thing to do? That Snoke and the First Order was something to align himself with?

A concerned beeping and whirring came from the corner, startling him out of his bubble of grief; Artoo. He’d assumed the droid had zoomed off somewhere else on the ship in his agitation – it hadn’t looked as if he would be able to stay still – but he’d retreated back here to his post, even though he’d turned the broadcast off in here, and all the receivers.

He patted the droid, not really good at reassurance, but feeling that he had to do something.

There was movement in the doorway. Rose, and behind her, BB-8.

“Are you-? No, stupid question. You’re not OK. Of course not. Why would you be OK?” She paused, looking out of the viewport as he had, her wide eyed expression suggesting that she was going through the same process of confronting the galaxy’s lack of acknowledgement. Then she looked down. “I’m not OK either.”

He nodded. There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that. Not that he could think of, anyway. Probably his mother would have come up with something stirring and inspirational. Han would have attempted to lighten the mood with something meant to prod her out of her maudlin state (while pretending he wasn’t feeling the same way) but which came off as dismissive. Rey would have said something positive and done her best to remind her friend that there was hope. Chewie would have wrapped her in a hug and growled reassuringly. Luke would have said something well-meaning but unhelpful about the will of the Cosmic Force. Snoke would have mocked and taunted, before killing her.

All he could do was stand there, numbly.

“What do we do now?” she asked eventually, sounding completely lost.

At her question, the anger that had lain dormant ever since he’d arrived at the Resistance base to find nothing but corpses reignited with an intensity that would make Starkiller Base look like a small fireworks show. He pulled the golden dice out of the pocket where he’d been carrying them, looking down at them glinting in the sunlight streaming through the viewport, then he placed them back on their hook, where they belonged.

“We are going to take down the First Order.”

“What? Just the two of us?” Indignant beeping came from behind them. “Four of us.”

“Sure, why not? They’ll never see it coming.”

Her laugh had a slightly hysterical edge. “Yeah, they sure wouldn’t.” A pause, and she shrugged. “OK, fine. I’m in. Not like I have anything else to lose, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes! Finally - FINALLY - we get past the setup & onto the actual plot! And it only took me eight chapters...
> 
>  
> 
> Next chapter: Hux Receives An Uninvited Guest


	9. In Which Hux Receives An Uninvited Guest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hux POV chapter! All together now: BOOOO! HISSSSS!
> 
> Been wondering what happened to Rey & the other people I've said have survived? Read on to find out!

This was it. He’d done it. After a lifetime of clawing his way to the top, enduring beatings, humiliation, and the cafeteria food in the Academy on Arkanis, it had all been worth it.

He finally had the life he deserved. The current indicator of this was that the shower he was currently enjoying was a water one, rather than a sonic. Even as a high-ranking officer who got plenty of perks, water showers were a rare luxury when you lived your life on a ship that had to carefully manage its resources. Starkiller had had plenty of water to go around and had therefore been able to provide proper shower facilities in the officers’ quarters, but he had only occasionally been stationed there.

No such barriers existed now though. He was now Supreme Leader and ruler of the galaxy. Eventually he intended to claim the title of Emperor, but he felt that taking on such a title required a great deal of ceremony. Therefore it was best to wait until the First Order had cemented its hold on the galaxy and properly established their infrastructure. It burned to not declare it right now, but patience was required here. Far better to wait and have the coronation done right than to risk it being spoiled by the absence of key personnel or equipment that was currently busy establishing the new galactic order.

But what he called himself was irrelevant. He could go wherever and do whatever he wanted.

And it had barely taken any time at all – only a few weeks ago he had been thrown about the bridge of his own ship like a ragdoll, in front of his own men, and here he was now with ultimate power. Of course in reality it had taken years of organisation and careful planning. Years of preparations, all to make sure that when they were ready, they could strike fast.

Obviously, no plan was foolproof - for a start, it was assumed that both the Supremacy and Starkiller would be operational and could be used as threats. Still, they had enough firepower to keep the galaxy cowed for now, and could simply imply there were bigger, better things just waiting to be unleashed, to buy time while actually building those bigger and better things.

Still, it was a plan - or, collection of plans - that was designed with customisation in mind. It was expected that things would change – old bases would have been repurposed in ways impossible to predict, planets that would have once been considered strategically important would have faded into irrelevance, and a senate full of politicians and associated hangers on that would have otherwise needed to be dealt with after their inevitable surrender were now mere space dust floating in the new asteroid field that had once been the Hosnian System. Allies and old loyalists who would welcome and help establish the new regime were unknown quantities. And on the First Order side of things, personnel deployment would change based on what people were available, who was in favour or disfavour, and what equipment and ships were operational.

So lists had been made, priorities (regarding both bases and allies) assessed, personnel numbers had been estimated. Spies and scouts had been seeded throughout the galaxy, watching and assessing allies and potential recruits, ready to leap into action when they received their instructions, to demand loyalty by simple request, bribery, or at blaster-point - whichever worked - and sabotage any potential resistance.

The earliest versions of these plans had been put in place at the height of the Empire itself, Palpatine knowing the value of a backup plan (though he'd presumably expected to have been one of the lucky ones to make it out, even if he had been conscientious enough to plan for the alternative) and had been tweaked and altered ever since. Though Hux felt it was his influence that had really had the most impact. As with everything he did, he applied technological methods to improving things.

All available data had been fed into computers. Imperial files detailing infrastructure, bases, support sites, government buildings, offices, the minimum amount of staff needed to operate each site, how much of that staff needed to be officials and how much could be covered by local civilians (either paid workers or forced labour). Personnel files regarding agents. Intelligence files regarding known allies and collaborators. First Order personnel numbers, and files highlighting anyone with special skills who would be most effective if deployed in particular areas. Lists of people who needed to be carefully (or not so carefully) removed. Lists of ships, weapons, equipment.

Algorithms that he had implemented had put all that together and worked everything out. Though human techs had looked over the work, checking for errors based on variables that machines could not predict, filling in data that was incomplete. And all of this was constantly altered as circumstances changed.

And now he ruled the galaxy! Here he was, on Coruscant, in the very palace that Emperor Palpatine had once ruled from! It had become a university in the intervening years, but the faculty and students had been turfed out, with any who objected being thrown into work camps, and it wouldn't be too much work to strip out benches and repaint. Probably. The work wasn't his to do, and it was no care of his if the work was hard or easy.

The university chancellor's apartment was perfectly acceptable. It was large and grand and had a nice balcony from which he could survey (some of) his domain. An effort had been made to mute the grandeur of the place, to be more in line with a house of learning, but it was a half-hearted effort, and it was still far more opulent than he was used to - he'd filled his quarters with more creature comforts than the average officer (not for him Ren's asceticism!), but there's still only so much you can do to add luxury to durasteel walls and bolted down furniture, and only so much room you can have on a crowded ship.

Their domination was far from complete - properly overhauling infrastructure would take time, buildings would need to be refurbished, shipyards and weapons factories that had been shut down in the wake of the New Republic's foolish-but-helpful disarmament policy would need to be brought back into use, enough personnel to properly manage the galaxy would need to be recruited and trained. But they had made a suitable impression on the galaxy, seized the reins, and established themselves in key strategic areas. It was all about looking powerful and leading the weak into this new era. Everything would fall into place from here.

And the one person who might have had a hope of leading any kind of rebellion was dead. He could have had executioner troopers handle it, but no. He wanted to make it clear who was the master here. Others might try to resist, here and there, but they would be new blood, without established names to inspire followers. It was hard to get people to follow you without a show of strength, and a show of strength would quickly draw attention, making it easy to cut them down before they became a problem.

Leia Organa though, had been one of the leaders of the rebellion that had brought down the Empire, and whose warnings that the First Order was a threat had now been proven correct. She would only have had to whistle and every low-life rebel in the galaxy would stampede a path to her door. She might even have swayed any old Imperials who resented finding that they were insufficient for the First Order's higher standards, and might decide that, as the daughter of Darth Vader, she would do.

Taking the Resistance out had been the very last step they'd needed to take to ensure the success of their galactic takeover. The preparations had begun almost as soon as the order to use Starkiller Base had been given – after all, there was no point lurking in hiding anymore after such a decisive gesture, and over the next few weeks his forces had been on the move, taking down system after system. Some planets had managed to put up a fight, but most of those had surrendered once they saw that all their neighbours and allies had been defeated and therefore would not be able to help, looked at how long their defences and resources could last, and did some depressing calculations. Plenty had simply pledged fealty right away, without even a token argument.

There were a few holdouts with decent planetary defences and stubborn attitudes where the First Order had not been able to place saboteurs, as well as sectors too tactically and militarily insignificant to bother with, but they didn’t matter; the First Order had won. It was not necessary for every sentient being in the galaxy to personally acknowledge it (though now that he thought of it, forcing everyone to individually pledge loyalty was appealing, and something that he would implement down the line, when things were more settled).

It wasn’t as if the Resistance could do anything to prevent the First Order taking their rightful place in the galaxy, but removing Organa ensured there would be no annoyances clouding their victory. Without her, there was no-one left for the masses to seize upon as a saviour.

As for the others though, who had surrendered when they'd realised the First Order had their princess and their pet Jedi, in a desperate ploy to get Hux to spare them... Well, he would have executed them as well, but he'd got talking to the most delightful chap who ran an absolutely brutal prison which just wasn't getting enough bodies for its work gangs anymore. Terrible. This is what happened when you had a weak Republic that was soft on crime. He had happily handed over the rebel scum (plus a few people who hadn't looked suitably ecstatic at the arrival of their new rulers) as a token of his favour, with the promise of many more workers to come in the future. It was a shame to pass up an opportunity to execute such scum, but establishing a good working relationship with a useful ally was important. The wookie had been especially appreciated. Kashyyyk had been one of the planets they hadn’t yet bothered with, but he was reconsidering that now; wookies had been a valuable part of the Empire’s slave labour force for a reason, and there was a great deal of rebuilding work to be done.

The Jedi girl was another matter. Hux was reluctant to kill her. Not out of mercy, but because she was the last of her kind (aside from that traitor, who would get what was coming to him, if he hadn’t already by his own stupidity). She’d been scheduled for execution alongside Organa. But when he'd walked into this place, the old site of the Jedi Order, that Palpatine had transformed into a monument to Imperial might, and breathed in its atmosphere, basked in his new status, how limitless it seemed, he had realised why so many powerful people collected dangerous things. It demonstrated your domination of the galaxy to be able to possess something, especially something rare or dangerous - or both.

And what could be more rare, more dangerous, than the last of the Jedi?

She could remain in storage for the time being, until they came up with a suitable way of displaying her. Something that could dampen her Force powers without having to drug her into unconsciousness, for a start. Probably some skimpy lingerie as well, though she was hardly much to look at.

As for her darker counterpart, he'd been surprisingly quiet. Cowering somewhere, perhaps. It was possible he was dead - his going to lightspeed while not clear of the Finalizer had resulted in considerable damage to the star destroyer, and there was an extremely high chance that that had not been entirely one-sided, and they would eventually find the wreck of his ship in whatever corner of space he'd attempted to flee to. But Hux would believe that when he had proof.

If he was alive, he would show himself soon enough, probably by throwing a tantrum and destroying whatever was nearby. If he was dead, they would find his remains, or his ship would turn up either in whole or in parts. He'd stolen a rather distinctive model, and Hux had halted any building of future craft of that type, to prevent confusion, despite the drawbacks (it was a considerable improvement on any other TIE model on every count, and its unkindness to less competent pilots was a great way of weeding out the weak).

He stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel. Then shrieked. No, bellowed. That's what he did. A deep manly roar. Not remotely high-pitched, and anyone caught saying otherwise would wind up scrubbing the freshers in the stormtrooper barracks with a toothbrush.

"What? Nothing I haven't seen before," said Leia Organa, shrugging. “Smaller though.”

"You're dead."

"So I am."

"I am imagining you."

"That would suggest you have an imagination. Nothing my spies ever brought me suggested that was the case."

He wrapped the towel around himself, seething. “Then you must be a hologram, some lookalike being transmitted here in an effort to trick me!”

Though, if that was the case, he thought, just where was the holoprojector? There was no sign of a beam, and nowhere that a transmitter could be hidden in the floor or walls… But what else was there?

“Hmm, looks like I was wrong – you do have an imagination. You kept that well-hidden.”

“Whatever you are, get out!”

She smirked. “No, l don’t think I will.”

Doing his best to ignore her, he stalked over to where he’d laid out his chosen outfit for the day. She followed, which was not possible with any form of holo tech he knew of. Fighting off the urge to demand she turn away – however she was here, she was invading his chambers, damnit – he shucked off the towel and began dressing. Maybe a little quickly, yes, but he was a busy man.

“Really? That shirt with those boots?” He ground his teeth. _Ignore her. Ignore her. She’s a fake. She can do nothing to you._ “And that gold braid just looks tacky.”

He roared and threw an ornament of some kind at her. It went straight through her and shattered against the wall.

The doors opened and a guard rushed in, blaster raised. He looked around before lowering it. “Sir, we heard shouting. Is everything alright?”

“I need someone to deal with that, immediately!”

The guard looked in the direction he was pointing, looking confused, even though the shimmering figure was _right there_! Then he looked down, seeing the shattered pottery, and visibly relaxed. Turning back to Hux, he saluted. “Of course, sir. I’ll have a droid sent in to clear up the mess right away.”

Behind him, Organa made a gesture that a princess absolutely should not know.

The guard saluted again, then turned and retreated back to his post where his colleague waited, covering the exit against the possibility of fleeing threats, closing the doors behind him.

Hux could do nothing but sputter indignantly at the closed doors.

“Oh no, Hugs. You won’t get rid of me that easily. You should have guessed that – you shot me in the head, after all.”

‘It’s Hux!” he snarled.

“That’s what l said – Hugs.”

He threw another ornament at her, with the same result as the first. She gave another smirk, made another, even ruder gesture – one that scandalised him, and he’d spent his entire life in the military – and vanished.

And no matter how hard he looked, no matter what scanners he checked the room with, there was no sign of any hidden devices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had been planning to hold off on this for a few days, because I like to have most of the next chapter written before I post, but I had so much fun with this one, & the next is at least partially written, so fuck it.
> 
> There don't seem to be any clear rules as to whether non-Force sensitive people can or can't see Force Ghosts, & I've put a lot of work into scenes where Leia sasses Hux so I'm damn well gonna use them.  
>  
> 
> Next chapter: ~~DJ Gets Force Choked~~ Rose Gets A Makeover


	10. In Which Rose Gets A Makeover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Look, I'm an 80s kid, OK? If I can find even the remotest excuse for a makeover scene, I will bloody well have a makeover scene. ;p

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
>   
> 
> 
> I liiiiiiive! I am so sorry this has taken so long. I got blocked a little, & then stuff happened. And by 'stuff' I mean _Beat Saber_ got released on PSVR  & I devoted a huge portion of my free time to playing with lightsabers. And then work got crazy. And by the time I had a chance to write anything I'd kinda lost my mojo for this fic, & my muse decided to offer up a bunch of ideas for completely different fics & wouldn't let up until I'd written at least something for them...
> 
> I also gotta apologise because I promised DJ getting Force-choked & this chapter does not contain that. One of the reasons this took so long to write was because it was a stuff-to-get-through-to-set-up-bigger-stuff chapter, & there kept being more & more stuff to get through, some of which ended up getting dropped after I realised the reason I was struggling with it was because it didn't fit, which meant having to shift other stuff around, which in turn meant things didn't line up... There's a bit involving trees (of all things) coming up in the next chapter, that I'd initially included, before dropping it, then bringing it back but moving it, before putting it back where it'd been in the first place, very slightly rewritten. *sigh*
> 
> It was going on & on & I wasn't even close to the stage where DJ would be showing up, so I figured I'd need to be posting what I currently had & saving him for chapter 11. And then I checked the wordcount of what was supposed to be chapter 10 & realised that wow that was a lot of words. Like, 10,000+ words. So I realised I needed to start chopping things up. He's still gonna get what's coming to him, but it's gonna be a few more chapters.
> 
>  
> 
> But look! A banner! I made it myself & I am most definitely not a graphic designer, but hey, I did it. Go me!

“We are going to take down the First Order.”

“What? Just the two of us?” Indignant beeping came from behind them. “Four of us.”

“Sure, why not? They’ll never see it coming.”

Her laugh had a slightly hysterical edge. “Yeah, they sure wouldn’t.” A pause, and she shrugged. “OK, fine. I’m in. Not like I have anything else to lose, right?”

She looked up at him, clearly expecting him to elaborate on this grand plan of his that he’d just blurted out. Shit. Why did people always assume he knew what he was doing?

 _OK, think. Come on, idiot._ Anger coursed through him and he had to force it down in order to concentrate. He could do this. He’d grown up on enough stories of rebel operations and sat through enough dull HoloPoint presentations of First Order strategies, as well as read plenty of (equally dull) reports speculating about Resistance resources and tactics.

Weapons. Big ones, and lots of them. Since the munitions cabinet only had a small collection of blasters, a couple of grenades, a few flashbangs, and a bowcaster, plus the personal weapons they had on them (though, since those included a couple of lightsabers and the kriffing Force, that wasn’t bad), they would need more. He was aware his protest would be a token one with no chance of any degree of success, but he still wanted to make it count and do as much damage as he could before they took him down. Rey hadn’t even been a footnote in Hux’s grand speech; he wanted to make sure her death was marked in some way. Killing a handful of stormtroopers (which the First Order basically regarded as semi-sentient furniture) and causing minor cosmetic damage to maybe one base wasn’t going to cut it.

They needed to go big or go home, and neither of them had a home to go to.

Information was the other main thing (you needed to know where and when to _use_ the weapons you had, otherwise you might end up attacking the wrong building or striking during everyone’s day off – or worse, attacking on Bring Your Child and/or Adorable Pet to Work Day, which tended not to go down too well with potential supporters). Again, they had a few small advantages there – he had insider knowledge, and she presumably had some firsthand knowledge of staging attacks against the First Order. But their knowledge would be outdated.

So they were in desperate need of resources and intel. The surest way of obtaining either of those things was credits. Which he didn’t have any of.

He never had, really. His parents had always handled financial transactions, and then he’d been packed off to become a Jedi, a profession which viewed credits as a bourgeois frippery that didn’t apply to them (especially when it was time to pay a tab or get a round of drinks in), and he’d gone from there to the First Order, which hadn’t actually paid him (something he’d never dared take up with Snoke), and it wasn’t as if he could have made use of his wages from there if he’d had any anyway.

He doubted Rose had anything – she probably hadn’t been privy to information about Resistance banking accounts, and if she’d had anything left over from that well-timed supply run then it probably wasn’t enough to buy them drinks with which to drown their sorrows.

They needed a place where credits were easy (or at least not too difficult) to get hold of, ideally a place where the information flowed equally freely and where they could find suitably dubious business people, so they could stock up in as few stops as possible.

He knew just the place. “We need to go to Canto Bight.”

“Oh you have got to be kidding me!”

*****

Why did every crazy plan involve Canto kriffing Bight?

She understood his reasoning. They needed credits. Even if they abandoned this insane, impossible plan to take on the First Order, they needed something to fund a new life in hiding. It made sense. But her last visit had been a disaster and she really didn’t want to try her chances again.

Trying to dissuade him, even as he began firing up the engines (it wasn’t like there was anything to wait for here, now), she pointed out an obvious argument. “But it’s on the other side of the galaxy! I’d take at least a week to get there! If we’re going to literally gamble the future of the Resistance, maybe we should pick somewhere closer.”

“You underestimate the Falcon.” He patted the control panel. “It’ll take four days, tops. And the closer places are all small fry, and run by cartels, who would react pretty brutally if they caught us winning a little too much. At least Canto Bight pretends to have a justice system. We’ve already got the First Order after us – or at least l have, and you will as soon as they figure out you’re alive. Do we really need to add to that?”

He had a point. If she and Finn had been caught flouting laws in any other gambling den, even something so simple as a parking violation, they’d never have made it to a cell. As she strapped herself into the co-pilot’s chair, she picked up on something he’d said. “You seem pretty confident in our luck, despite all evidence to the contrary.”

He snorted. “Who needs luck, when you have the Force?”

He twitched his fingers and a wrench that had been sitting on the edge of a control panel flew towards him, landing in his palm. A flick of his wrist and it went flying off again to land back on the console, tumbling end over end far more times than physics would allow as it did so.

“You’re going to use the Force to cheat? That seems… bad.”

“Oh no. What will the Jedi Council say,” he deadpanned. “Seriously though, you’re welcome to try things the fair way – though there’s no such thing as ‘fair’ in a casino, not when the house has stacked the odds so firmly in its favour.”

Another good point. Damnit. “OK, genius, but in case you haven’t figured, we need something for a buy-in. I don’t think I have enough to even buy a drink in Canto Bight, and I doubt you remembered to pick up your wallet when you fled for your life.”

He smirked. “Oh, I’ll just ask nicely. Amazing how far that can get you.” He gave a sigh and dropped the superior act. (OK, he downgraded it very slightly, but she’d take what she could get.) “Look, I get it. You were there a few weeks ago and it did not end well for you. But it’s our best option. The casino is by far the biggest and the richest, and it attracts people from all over the galaxy, making it much easier to blend in. And if all else fails and security starts to suspect something is up, the resort is packed with idiot tourists with more money than sense. And swindling those people is practically a public service.”

He really needed to stop making good points like this; it was infuriating.

They were nearly out of the atmosphere and about to jump to lightspeed. Not sure why she was even bothering, she tried one last tactic to talk him out of it, going for a low blow that she felt bad about even as the words left her mouth. “What would your mother think of cheating to get ahead?”

He snorted. “You really did not know her well at all, did you?”

*****

It was as they reached the Cantonica system and were about to come out of hyperspace that a new challenge presented itself.

“Come on. We’d best get changed.” He got up from his seat at a console where he’d been conducting checks on the ship’s systems and walked past her.

That caused her to glance down at her stained jumpsuit. She’d been too focused to care last time, and it had turned out not to matter as they’d managed to evade casino security, but having been here already, she could easily see how clearly she stood out from everyone else at the resort, and thanks to how last time went, she couldn’t afford to stand out – literally, as they were here to try to make credits.

“Wait!” she ran after him. “I don’t have anything to change into!”

He was already in the captain’s quarters when she caught up with him. _Damn tall people with their kriffing longer legs._ She walked in to find him sort of… leaning into the wall… She was about to ask if he was alright, when he shifted, and part of the wall moved aside to reveal an alcove.

She’d thought Artoo had told her about all the hidden compartments, but it seemed there was another.

She couldn’t see properly with him in the way, but it seemed a weird place for a smuggling compartment, and… was that a mirror at the back?

He was still standing there and, frustrated, she peered around him, wondering at the holdup. Then she understood.

The stuff in here wasn’t random junk. OK, there was some stuff that did look like random junk scattered about, but only some. A few pieces of clothing hung from the rail (actually hung up – not just thrown on top of something!) and most of the boxes looked like proper storage rather than random crates.

This was his parents’ actual stuff.

He stood there for what seemed like a long while looking at it, but she wasn’t sure what to say to snap him out of it. Eventually though he shook himself and walked into the alcove, looking around as he did so.

“You’ll need something to wear… Ah! Here.” He peered inside a garment bag hanging from the rail. “Hmm, that’s better than I hoped. I was sure she’d left some clothing or other here from one of the trips she took in the Falcon, but this must have been for some party or other. Perfect for wowing rich idiots.”

Then he left, going so fast that she felt he was leaving more because he didn’t want to spend any more time in this tiny space than for the sake of modesty.

She sighed. She never been much of a dress person. Not because she hated them, but they weren’t very practical for crawling through maintenance tunnels or clambering over pipes, and would quickly get torn and dirty. It seemed a waste to have something you never wore, and pretty dresses eventually became as alien to her life as fathers.

When she opened the bag, this lack of practice revealed itself and she groaned. It was some weird style with lots of draped fabric and panels to wrap around, and what might be a matching shawl or cape, or could be meant for attaching to the skirt. Great for not having to worry about it fitting, but only if she could work out how to get into it.

A great deal of swearing – plus some surprising help from Artoo – later, and she had the dress on correctly. Or at least it seemed to be correct. It covered the bits that needed covering, and it seemed to be arranged in a way that her limited understanding of fashion told her fabric should be arranged. She supposed she could always claim it was a bold new fashion style if somebody pointed out any mistake.

He’d forgotten to hand her any shoes – men! – but she found a nice-looking pair in the corner, and they fit her. She didn’t feel right looking around for jewellery though – it made her feel like a thief – so she wore her medallion. She didn’t know what people would think of a richly-dressed casino patron wearing jewellery representing a poor mining system, but she didn’t care. They’d probably assume she owned it. Not wanting to go without some kind of weapon she strapped her electro-prod to her thigh.

She didn’t have the long, lustrous hair required for elaborate hairstyles (or the skill to create them), so she settled for pulling her hair out of its tie, combing it out, and fluffing it a little. Hopefully the way it sprang away from her face like that would appear to be a proper style and not just something her hair did.

Turning to see herself in the mirror, she almost didn’t recognise the woman standing before her. It was like looking at a stranger. She wanted to run. Then she gripped the medallion. Her sister had given her life so that the Resistance could keep going. The least she could do was pretend to be some elegant rich lady for a few hours in order to separate a few First Order collaborators from their credits. She twirled a little and flapped her arms like a porg to make the fabric swish. It wasn’t remotely practical, but oh, it was so pretty. She wished Pae-Pae was still here, that she could be on this job with her. They could dance all night in pretty dresses and see a fathier race.

But she wasn’t here, and there was no time, or reason, to dance.

After propping the wall panel back in place to prevent any inquisitive porgs getting in and destroying something, she ventured out to see where he was and found him in the main hold. He was still wearing the same outfit.

“Aren’t you getting changed?”

“I did. See?” He waved at himself and, looking properly, she could see a few changes; he’d switched out his usual belt for a leather one with a shiny buckle. The lightsaber he’d made for Rey hung at his belt.

He then picked up the large piece of fabric lying next to him, and she saw he’d unfolded his cowl and was now draping it into a sort of asymmetric cape, which covered the saber hilt and looked more like a fashion choice than of someone trying to hide their face. He pinned it with an ornate brooch that Rose had seen General Organa wearing. He saw her look. “It’s the royal crest of Alderaan.”

“Won’t it give away who you are?”

He shrugged. “Who cares? None of my many, many crimes are linked to the name Ben Solo, and even if they were, Canto Bight doesn’t care so long as I have credits and don’t murder anyone on casino property. There’s an extremely tacky market for Alderaanian goods – you should see how much even a small bottle of Toniray wine goes for – so people will more likely just assume I’m a collector.”

He adjusted the cloak, trying to find the optimum position for hiding his weapon without making it obvious that he was hiding a weapon, before picking up the pair of dice that normally hung from a chain in the cockpit, and hung them from the brooch. “There. How do I look?”

She looked him over and had to admit that, unimaginative as the outfit was, it worked. He’d made some effort to spruce it up a little – he’d cleaned it, shined the boots, and even brushed his hair. It was plainer than most of the outfits she’d seen worn on Canto Bight, even with the brooch and buckle adding some shine, but the fabric was of decent quality and enough of the patrons had been wearing solid and unadorned black that he’d just come across as understated rather than out of place.

If anything she would stand out in red – the favoured colours had seemed to be black, white or gold – but it was pretty, and she didn’t feel like getting into another fight with an article of clothing, if there even were any dresses for her to change into.

“Not bad.” He nodded, accepting the compliment.

<<Acceptable.>> adds Artoo, and BB-8 chimes reluctant agreement, still not seeming to be warming to his new companion.

“What about me?” She attempted a twirl, only to trip over a pile of junk, and awkwardly have to right herself.

“Hmm.”

“Hmm?! How come I only get a ‘Hmm’?”

He ignored her and walked into one of the bunk rooms, tossing a, “Sit down.” over his shoulder. She looked over at the two droids, but she only got confused beeps in return. Annoyed, she remained standing. She was not going to let herself have orders barked at her.

He left the crew quarters and went into the captain’s quarters, and then came back in. He re-emerged carrying a few things, one of which she recognised as a cosmetics palette belonging to one of the surviving Resistance shuttle pilots (well, she had been surviving until a week ago). The others were brushes.

He held them out to her.

Oh. Oh no. “No way!”

He rolled his eyes at her refusal. “It’ll look weird if you’re all dressed up but you forgot to do your face.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my face!”

“I’m not saying there is! But you’ve been here before. Tell me I’m wrong.”

She wanted to. Telling him he was wrong was the best thing. But she had to admit that all the humanoid women she’d seen had seemed to be wearing more paint than an art gallery, as had a few of the men, and many beings she couldn’t determine the gender of.

Still, she didn’t think it would be that weird. Maybe a few people would sneer, but so what? It wasn’t as if that was an arrestable offence, even for Canto Bight.

“I walked around here with my face bare last time and nobody seemed to care, and at least now I’m not wearing a jumpsuit.” She folded her arms, smirking in triumph. _Ha! Can’t argue that, can you, Mr. Forgot-to-do-Your-Face?_

“Yes, you walked around with your face bare, and then that face got arrested, if that part of that thief’s story was true.” _Dammit._

Being able to tell him that he was wrong was indeed a great experience, but oh so frustratingly rare. Damn him. She and Finn had escaped before they’d been properly processed, so the authorities hadn’t gotten biographical information or biometrics, but they’d been wandering around the casino for a while and probably appeared on a lot of cams, meaning her face was in the system even if no other identifying information was. It didn’t matter if security didn’t have her fingerprints, or her name, or know her favourite colour (which, for the record, was green), if she could be recognised by anybody who had seen a security holo.

She took the palette, and looked down at it, but she’d hardly ever worn makeup in her life – she’d just never had any reason to, especially as even basic things became hard to obtain once the First Order had invaded, certainly luxury goods – and the times she had, Paige had done it.

She was pretty sure _that one_ was for eyes, and _that one_ was for cheeks… or was it the other way round…?

He sighed and took the damn thing back off her. “Sit down.”

“Do you even know how to apply makeup?”

“I watched my mother apply the stuff. And I used to do calligraphy. I can handle this.”

“I don’t even know what that is!”

“Just sit down and stay still!”

She rolled her eyes and grumbled but did as she was told. He could hardly do a worse job than her, and after she’d washed it off she’d just go back into the alcove where the dress had been and see if she could find something to use as a veil.

He had a steady hand though, she could give him that. He lined her eyes with something, then dabbed some powder onto her eyelids. Then he began painting lines all over her face; she assumed he was applying some sort of foundation and was going to blend it, but he sat back before doing so. “There!”

She turned to the droids for an opinion. Artoo and BB-8 looked back at her for a few moments, before BB-8 extended a welding torch with the flame lit. The hesitation didn’t bode well though. She got up and checked her face in the mirror in the fresher. The eyes were about normal, though she had no real idea if they were considered good in the view of people who cared about this stuff.

The rest of his work though, was… weird. He’d covered her nose and cheeks in lines and swirls. She thought it looked pretty silly, but it would hopefully make it harder for any security cameras to match her face to that of the escaped criminal from a few weeks ago. The design reminded her of something, and looking down, she realised he’d borrowed elements from her medallion. That combined with his steady hand meant that they looked deliberate rather than the work of a crazy person (though they _were_ the work of a crazy person) and with patrons from all over the galaxy, people would assume it was some custom from a world they had not visited.

She still wasn’t sure about complimenting him, so all she said when she returned to the hold was, “It’s fine.”

He didn’t seem to expect anything more, nodding in acceptance, before picking up a bulging pouch and hanging it from the opposite side of his belt to his lightsaber.

“I didn’t think we had enough credits to fill a pouch that much.”

“We don’t. I just filled it up with random nuts and bolts lying around. I wanted to bring something to stash credits in, but if I walk in carrying an empty credit pouch it’d probably attract more attention than if I ran in swinging my lightsaber.”

Smart plan. She’d stashed the few credits she did have in a hidden pocket in the dress, so if anyone tried to call their bluff she could flash something at least.

He bowed, slightly awkwardly and held his arm out, elbow bent. “Shall we, my lady?”

*****

The four days it took to get to Cantonica felt more like four years. His desire for vengeance against those who had taken Rey from him was strong, but not enough to silence the ever-present self-doubt. ( _You? What can you do? You screw up everything you do, yet you think this is something you could succeed at? Even a true hero couldn’t manage this, and you are nowhere near that – just a monster, and not even a good one at that; you have to wear a mask in a feeble attempt to attempt to hide how weak you are…_ )

He’d wondered sometimes, how much of his confusion was down to Snoke’s influence. Was he feeding all those feelings of doubt in order to push his apprentice? Some sort of test, like resisting the Light? That once he was alone in his own head, could think for himself, things would fall into place and the conflict would be gone.

But no. All Snoke’s death had done was sever the cord that bound him to something, however awful that thing might have been. Now he was unmoored, lost. And the mess inside his head, all the weakness and fear, it had all been him. He was his own worst enemy, and always had been. No wonder everyone he’d ever known had wanted rid of him.

He almost missed Snoke’s hold on his mind. Any time the confusion and conflict had become too much, the pull of the light too strong, his master would cut through everything with harsh rebukes and reminders, issuing some new command, or giving his apprentice a new test to force him ever onward. Being a monster on a leash made things so simple. He’d desperately believed that maybe if he went far enough down this path he’d found himself on, everything would make sense and the conflict would end.

In the aftermath of killing Snoke, he had sought control through power, hoping that if he took the place of his master, he could achieve mastery over himself as he did over the galaxy. But he had not even managed either of those things.

Then he’d hoped he’d find some measure of absolution in turning himself in to his mother and her gang. It would be painful, and might result in his execution, but it would have been worth it, and his death would have been quick. And he would have been able to see Rey again, tell her all the things he’d wanted to say. He would have closure, a sense of finality.

But he’d been denied that. No chance to submit himself to his mother’s judgement and receive whatever justice she felt he deserved, swiftly and fairly. No chance to tell her how many regrets he had, how he’d wished he could take all his actions back. No chance to tell Rey he loved her. Or thought he did at least. He was a monster after all, probably not capable of love, just an imitation, feelings of infatuation for someone he could never have. Perhaps it was better that he’d never gotten the opportunity to burden her with whatever passed for a heart for him.

But her loss burned. Her death was his fault. He’d brought her into this. He’d led the attack that had brought the First Order to her planet. He’d taken her on Takodana instead of calling in reinforcements and searching for that droid just a little longer. He’d killed one of the few people who had ever shown her any affection, right in front of her. He’d sought to defend himself, telling her the truth of what had happened the night he had fled Luke’s temple, and led her to believe that he was better than he was (it wasn’t as if she needed a warning against Luke doing the same to her – she wasn’t a monster, after all). He’d caused her to think he was worth saving – worth _anything_ – leading her to travel to him. He’d helped build – and gone on to command – the organisation that had killed her.

He destroyed everything he touched.

He owed it to her to avenge her death, however futile a gesture it might be.

And what else could he do? Drift forever through the galaxy in this ship that was a memorial to all that he’d thrown away in pursuit of a goal that had always been beyond his reach, forever looking over his shoulder, letting the First Order’s actions pass without even a comment?

No, this was all he had. He would take down as many of the bastards as he could, destroy destroy destroy, until he was brought down. It was probably the one thing he was good at. He might as well put his tendency to ruin everything to use.

But the whispers would not cease. _You are so useless you wouldn’t even be effective at sabotaging something._

He kept constantly busy, throwing himself into repairs. He talked as well, desperate to fill the quiet of his head. Stories of his childhood, tales of the old rebellion that his parents and their friends had told him, without the layers of embellishment that had been added in retellings passed around by people who hadn’t been there (though probably some embellishment by people who had), even gossip he’d picked up about New Republic senators. The memories hurt, but it was better than sitting in silence.

When he ran out of things to say, he listened to her. About a hard but not terrible childhood on a freezing cold Outer Rim mining colony with her parents and sister. About a life that had become even harder when the First Order took over and instituted impossible quotas with brutal reprisals for failure or defiance, which had become deadly when they had stripped the mines of resources and used the planet for target practice.

When they ran out of repairs that could be done with parts they had on hand and while the ship was in hyperspace, he resorted to cleaning. The thought that Han Solo would be more insulted at that than being murdered was simultaneously amusing, comforting and painful.

Checking the navicomp, he saw they were almost there, and should probably get changed into something that’d fit in better. He was pretty sure that there was some nicer clothing in the sealed-off section of the captain’s quarters that Uncle Lando had told him had been a dressing room, but Han had lacked any sense of style and just used it for storage of valuables instead.

He heard Rose shout something after him, but didn’t catch it and didn’t care to stop and ask. He’d done a thorough check of all the hidden compartments on the ship, but he’d avoided this one, and wasn’t looking forward to what he’d find.

He remembered the trick to moving the panel aside, having seen Han do it often enough, helped along with a small application of the Force. Finding what he needed should have been equally simple, but as soon as he looked inside, he froze, overwhelmed. After a week in the Falcon, he thought he’d become inured against the constant assault of memories. At least enough that it all faded into a dull background ache with only occasional spikes of acute pain. But this was like going from Hoth to Mustafar.

No matter where he looked there were echoes and pain. A painting that some artist had gifted to the family depicting his parents in heroic poses, which had made his father feel so awkward that it had never been hung up. A small trinket box that he’d never seen before but clearly belonged to his mother. His old tooka doll could be seen sticking out from under the lid of a box that probably contained even more of his old toys. A box of clothing that he’d brought on trips with Han and Chewie, long since grown out of; unlike everything else on the ship, it was carefully and neatly folded.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, but slowly he became aware of Rose standing behind him probably wondering why he was standing there like an idiot. He could see a box in the corner piled with clothing that had belonged to Han – nicer things bought after he helped save a galaxy and married a princess and found himself thrown into a social scene where he was the recipient of snide glances and whispers about the motivation behind the marriage being more to do with Leia’s pregnancy than anything else (whispers that had persisted long enough to be heard and understood by the result of that pregnancy). There would be something in there that would be perfect for a high class casino, but he would rather take another shot from Chewie’s bowcaster than look through it.

He shook himself and fought back against the deluge of memory, forcing himself to step inside; he might not be able to examine anything too closely, but he refused to be defeated and forced to run away from a closet as if he was a child afraid of monsters. He was the only monster here.

Besides, Rose would not be so afflicted, not having directly or indirectly caused the death of any of the owners of this stuff. Muttering to himself without really hearing what he was saying in an effort to focus on the task at hand and block out everything else, he glanced at the clothing rail and saw a garment bag. A quick peek inside showed a swathe of brightly-coloured, expensive-looking fabric. He shoved it into her arms and fled.

It was only after he was in the main hold that it occurred to him it might not fit, but he had no intention of going back in there. She was a good problem solver; she’d figure it out.

Since he wasn’t going to be wearing anyone else’s clothes, he’d have to make do with his own. Luckily black was considered perfect formal wear, and he’d just washed it, but it was just that bit too plain and sombre.

He started rummaging around in drawers and boxes, hoping to stumble on… he didn’t know what. He wasn’t particularly a fashion expert and had never had to put much thought into outfits. The BB unit, which had been loitering in here, began following him around, beeping at him accusingly, as if this wasn’t his ship (even if it didn’t feel like it belonged to him).

“Oh, do be quiet. Or at least help me look for something to make this outfit more… l don’t know… more interesting.”

It considered him for a moment, head tilted, and then rolled up to a crate and bumped against it a few times. He peered inside to see a porg crouching amidst a collection of random objects, including a black belt with a shiny metal buckle, and a brooch featuring the crest of the royal house of Alderaan. He sighed inwardly (if the creatures were going to be a permanent fixture, he really needed to start doing a better job of porg-proofing the ship) and Force Pulled the items into his hand, not wanting to risk injury if their removal was met with protest. He would never live it down if he got savaged by something so adorable.

But at least he didn’t have to venture back into a space that not only contained painful memories but likely also a haIf-naked woman at this point.

The belt was nice, but wasn’t designed to hold a lightsaber (unsurprising, as it had probably belonged to his father), and there was no way he was leaving it behind – he was more than able to defend himself with the Force alone if they ran into trouble, and it risked giving them away, but his mind rebelled at walking into hostile territory without a weapon. So he grabbed some tools and set about adding a hook. He could just drape his cowl so that it hung from his shoulders like a cape, which would at least hide his saber from a casual glance.

The droid went back to ignoring him, which was fine with him.

Job done, he fastened the belt around his waist and went to hang his saber from it, but then hesitated. While his improvised cape would cover it, there was no way of hiding it completely (unless he planned to hold himself perfectly rigid the whole time he was there and avoid any kind of breeze or draught), so there was a high chance someone might see it. And a small chance someone might recognise it. Some of the people here would be First Order allies and may have worked closely enough to have some familiarity or heard rumours.

And even for those who could not identify it as a specific weapon with a particular reputation, it was a harsh and functional tool; he would not be able to pass it off as an antique blade looted from the corpse of a Jedi Knight, carried purely for aesthetics.

Since going weaponless was not in any way an option, after a long moment of hesitation, he Pulled the saber he had made for Rey to him. It felt like sacrilege to carry it – it was for her, and he wasn’t worthy. But he had no other option. He hoped she would understand – he had committed worse crimes (though in this moment he couldn’t think of any). The hilt was hardly beautiful, but at least looked like it could be an antique, and had a simple, utilitarian look to it.

Before he could add the cloak, Rose entered the room. He blinked a few times in shock, barely recognising her. BB-8 let out a high pitched beep.

She seemed equally surprised, though for the opposite reason. “Aren’t you getting changed?”

“I did. See?” he replied, indicating the belt. She didn’t look convinced.

He reached down and picked up his cowl, draped over the bench, wrapping it around his shoulders so that it hung down one side while being open on the other, pinning it in place with the brooch.

Rose looked at it curiously, so he explained, “It’s the royal crest of Alderaan.”

She frowned at this. “Won’t it give away who you are?”

He shrugged. “Who cares? None of my many, many crimes are linked to the name Ben Solo, and even if they were, Canto Bight doesn’t care so long as I have credits and don’t murder anyone on casino property. There’s an extremely tacky market for Alderaanian goods – you should see how much even a small bottle of Toniray wine goes for – so people will more likely just assume I’m a collector.”

He adjusted the cloak, trying to find the optimum position for hiding the lightsaber without looking too much like he was hiding something, while also ensuring it looked like a deliberate sartorial choice and not like he didn’t know how scarves worked, before picking up Han’s golden dice (though they hadn’t brought _him_ much luck as far as he could see) and hanging them from the brooch. “There. How do I look?”

She looked him up and down. “Not bad.”

The droids beeped in agreement (BB-8’s was somewhat more reluctant).

“What about me?” She whirled round, trying to twirl, only to trip over, flailing in order to right herself. The flailing had more of less the same effect as a twirl would have had though, so he got the idea.

“Hmm.” The dress is nice, but there is something missing that, while it shouldn’t be considered essential, would nonetheless make the outfit look unfinished. There was no makeup, which would attract more comment then a small pin holding his cloak.

She glared at him, obviously insulted. “Hmm?! How come l only get a ‘Hmm’?”

Not bothering to give her an answer, he made his way to one of the bunk rooms, telling her to sit down as he did so. He was sure he’d seen a cosmetics palette in one of the drawers, left there by some Resistance fighter who had considered it part of their uniform, but was far beyond needing it now. He found it quickly enough, but there didn’t seem to be anything to apply any of it with, so he detoured to the captain’s quarters and picked up his calligraphy brushes from the box.

He returned to find her still standing, of course. He didn’t even bother to roll his eyes.

He held the tools out to her, but she refused, putting her hands out in front of her as if to ward them off. “No way!”

Now he did roll his eyes. “It’ll look weird if you’re all dressed up but you forgot to do your face.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my face!”

He bit back a sigh. “I’m not saying there is! But you’ve been here before. Tell me I’m wrong.”

He could tell from her glare that she desperately wanted to, but as Mustafar would freeze over before a wealthy woman would go without cosmetics, she only had one card to play here…

“I walked around here with my face bare last time and nobody seemed to care, and at least now I’m not wearing a jumpsuit.” She stated this defiantly, as he couldn’t deny that had happened. But in her determination to spite him she was missing the obvious and had stumbled into a trap.

“Yes, you walked around with your face bare, and then that face got arrested, if that part of that thief’s story was true.”

Perhaps he wasn’t that bad at Sabbacc after all…

She took the palette with obvious reluctance, but then just stared down at it as if he’d handed her a mysterious artefact from a lost ancient civilisation. Didn’t all girls know this stuff? Well he didn’t have time for her to figure it out. They would be emerging from hyperspace at any moment.

Sighing, he took it back off her. “Sit down.”

She ignored him. Of course. “Do you even know how to apply makeup?”

“I watched my mother apply the stuff. And I used to do calligraphy. I’m sure I can handle this.” Really, how hard could it be?

“I don’t even know what that is!” she grumbled, frustrated.

“Just sit down and stay still!”

She rolled her eyes and grumbled under her breath but did as she was told, miracle of miracles.

Okay… shit. What was he supposed to do? Think… Right, okay… There was supposed to be something the same colour as the face to go all over, right? But looking from Rose’s face to the palette and back again, there didn’t seem to be anything that matched. Were you supposed to mix colours together, like blending inks? But he knew from that that creating a new shade involved a lot of test patches and trial and error, and there wasn’t time for experimentation.

The goal here was to obscure her features enough to hide her identity anyway, and a simple base wouldn’t do enough to be worth the effort. Besides, her skin looked fine and his brushes were mainly for fine detail, so that’s what he’d concentrate on.

He lined her eyes and painted the lids, then leaned back to consider the effect. The effect altered her eyes slightly, but it wasn’t enough to be a truly effective disguise. Some paint to the lips failed to help much, as all he could really do was change the colour – trying to change the shape risked her looking like a clown.

Well, fuck. He’d succeeded in adding something that would be considered a necessary part of her outfit, which was something. But it wasn’t enough to obscure her face and any casino worth its salt would be festooned with hovercams equipped with facial recognition tech. Usually it was just set to pick up known cheats and banned patrons and ignored any other crimes (because casinos didn’t care how you obtained your credits, so long as it wasn’t from them), but if Canto Bight’s were more widely equipped and set to identify any lawbreakers, then Rose would set alarms ringing as soon as they stepped out of the Falcon.

But what else could he do? He’d done the eyes and the lips, and there was nothing else but the face itself... Aha! Some sort of elaborate facial markings would do the trick. It had to look like a deliberate design though… The medallion she was wearing had a pattern of intersecting swirls and lines, so he used that as a basis, echoing it enough that it seemed clear there was a theme at play, but differed enough to be more a motif than a direct copy. Short of some baffleweave falling from the sky, it was their best option.

“There!” he said, sitting back and admiring the finished effect.

She looked to the droids for an opinion, but as they knew less about the applying of cosmetics than he did, they couldn’t provide a satisfactory answer, so she went into the fresher to check the mirror there.

Her assessment was, “It’s fine.” Not exactly a resounding endorsement, but he’d take what he could get. He picked up the dummy moneybag he’d put together, which she found convincing enough to be confused as to how he’d managed to find credits to fill it. He hadn’t, of course, but it was a good idea to look like they had credits to spend. He’d learned well enough from Han that a good bluff was necessary to get into the game. Though he’d also observed that being able to back up the bluff was eventually necessary, so he would need to acquire actual credits as soon as possible; this was where things had tended to go awry for his father, who was rarely able to handle that part. Right up until he had backed up his words with a deed, at the cost of his own life…

No. Don’t think about that.

The alarm notifying them that they’d dropped out of hypserpace blared. They had things to do.

*****

Communication with docking control went smoothly, though that was to be expected, the place might have a reputation for exclusivity, but as a resort it was hardly going to turn potential customers away without good reason. They would only be rejected at this stage if the ship’s ID was flagged as stolen or belonging to someone who was banned or deemed troublesome. Once they landed though, that would be where things got tricky. The place might welcome continued waves of chumps to bleed dry, but they still needed to make some attempt to weed out riff-raff. They would demand identification, tickets, passes.

(He tried to ignore how easily he slipped into his father’s speech patterns as he negotiated landing clearance, reeling off an alias for the ship without a second’s thought, as if this was what he’d been doing all his life, instead of...)

He navigated to where they were told and landed. Desperate to avoid any introspection in the silence left by the engines’ shutdown, he leapt out of his seat and bowed, attempting to recall every lesson in manners his mother had tried to bestow, and offers an arm to his companion. “Shall we, my lady?”

“Sure, let’s go,” she said, taking his arm. “But I have a bad feeling about this.”

“We are going to take down the First Order.”

“What? Just the two of us?” Indignant beeping came from behind them. “Four of us.”

“Sure, why not? They’ll never see it coming.”

Her laugh had a slightly hysterical edge. “Yeah, they sure wouldn’t.” A pause, and she shrugged. “OK, fine. I’m in. Not like I have anything else to lose, right?”

She looked up at him, clearly expecting him to elaborate on this grand plan of his that he’d just blurted out. Shit. Why did people always assume he knew what he was doing?

 _OK, think. Come on, idiot._ Anger coursed through him and he had to force it down in order to concentrate. He could do this. He’d grown up on enough stories of rebel operations and sat through enough dull HoloPoint presentations of First Order strategies, as well as read plenty of (equally dull) reports speculating about Resistance resources and tactics.

Weapons. Big ones, and lots of them. Since the munitions cabinet only had a small collection of blasters, a couple of grenades, a few flashbangs, and a bowcaster, plus the personal weapons they had on them (though, since those included a couple of lightsabers and the kriffing Force, that wasn’t bad), they would need more. He was aware his protest would be a token one with no chance of any degree of success, but he still wanted to make it count and do as much damage as he could before they took him down. Rey hadn’t even been a footnote in Hux’s grand speech; he wanted to make sure her death was marked in some way. Killing a handful of stormtroopers (which the First Order basically regarded as semi-sentient furniture) and causing minor cosmetic damage to maybe one base wasn’t going to cut it.

They needed to go big or go home, and neither of them had a home to go to.

Information was the other main thing (you needed to know where and when to _use_ the weapons you had, otherwise you might end up attacking the wrong building or striking during everyone’s day off – or worse, attacking on Bring Your Child and/or Adorable Pet to Work Day, which tended not to go down too well with potential supporters). Again, they had a few small advantages there – he had insider knowledge, and she presumably had some firsthand knowledge of staging attacks against the First Order. But their knowledge would be outdated.

So they were in desperate need of resources and intel. The surest way of obtaining either of those things was credits. Which he didn’t have any of.

He never had, really. His parents had always handled financial transactions, and then he’d been packed off to become a Jedi, a profession which viewed credits as a bourgeois frippery that didn’t apply to them (especially when it was time to pay a tab or get a round of drinks in), and he’d gone from there to the First Order, which hadn’t actually paid him (something he’d never dared take up with Snoke), and it wasn’t as if he could have made use of his wages from there if he’d had any anyway.

He doubted Rose had anything – she probably hadn’t been privy to information about Resistance banking accounts, and if she’d had anything left over from that well-timed supply run then it probably wasn’t enough to buy them drinks with which to drown their sorrows.

They needed a place where credits were easy (or at least not too difficult) to get hold of, ideally a place where the information flowed equally freely and where they could find suitably dubious business people, so they could stock up in as few stops as possible.

He knew just the place. “We need to go to Canto Bight.”

“Oh you have got to be kidding me!”

*****

Why did every crazy plan involve Canto kriffing Bight?

She understood his reasoning. They needed credits. Even if they abandoned this insane, impossible plan to take on the First Order, they needed something to fund a new life in hiding. It made sense. But her last visit had been a disaster and she really didn’t want to try her chances again.

Trying to dissuade him, even as he began firing up the engines (it wasn’t like there was anything to wait for here, now), she pointed out an obvious argument. “But it’s on the other side of the galaxy! I’d take at least a week to get there! If we’re going to literally gamble the future of the Resistance, maybe we should pick somewhere closer.”

“You underestimate the Falcon.” He patted the control panel. “It’ll take four days, tops. And the closer places are all small fry, and run by cartels, who would react pretty brutally if they caught us winning a little too much. At least Canto Bight pretends to have a justice system. We’ve already got the First Order after us – or at least l have, and you will as soon as they figure out you’re alive. Do we really need to add to that?”

He had a point. If she and Finn had been caught flouting laws in any other gambling den, even something so simple as a parking violation, they’d never have made it to a cell. As she strapped herself into the co-pilot’s chair, she picked up on something he’d said. “You seem pretty confident in our luck, despite all evidence to the contrary.”

He snorted. “Who needs luck, when you have the Force?”

He twitched his fingers and a wrench that had been sitting on the edge of a control panel flew towards him, landing in his palm. A flick of his wrist and it went flying off again to land back on the console, tumbling end over end far more times than physics would allow as it did so.

“You’re going to use the Force to cheat? That seems… bad.”

“Oh no. What will the Jedi Council say,” he deadpanned. “Seriously though, you’re welcome to try things the fair way – though there’s no such thing as ‘fair’ in a casino, not when the house has stacked the odds so firmly in its favour.”

Another good point. Damnit. “OK, genius, but in case you haven’t figured, we need something for a buy-in. I don’t think I have enough to even buy a drink in Canto Bight, and I doubt you remembered to pick up your wallet when you fled for your life.”

He smirked. “Oh, I’ll just ask nicely. Amazing how far that can get you.” He gave a sigh and dropped the superior act. (OK, he downgraded it very slightly, but she’d take what she could get.) “Look, I get it. You were there a few weeks ago and it did not end well for you. But it’s our best option. The casino is by far the biggest and the richest, and it attracts people from all over the galaxy, making it much easier to blend in. And if all else fails and security starts to suspect something is up, the resort is packed with idiot tourists with more money than sense. And swindling those people is practically a public service.”

He really needed to stop making good points like this; it was infuriating.

They were nearly out of the atmosphere and about to jump to lightspeed. Not sure why she was even bothering, she tried one last tactic to talk him out of it, going for a low blow that she felt bad about even as the words left her mouth. “What would your mother think of cheating to get ahead?”

He snorted. “You really did not know her well at all, did you?”

*****

It was as they reached the Cantonica system and were about to come out of hyperspace that a new challenge presented itself.

“Come on. We’d best get changed.” He got up from his seat at a console where he’d been conducting checks on the ship’s systems and walked past her.

That caused her to glance down at her stained jumpsuit. She’d been too focused to care last time, and it had turned out not to matter as they’d managed to evade casino security, but having been here already, she could easily see how clearly she stood out from everyone else at the resort, and thanks to how last time went, she couldn’t afford to stand out – literally, as they were here to try to make credits.

“Wait!” she ran after him. “I don’t have anything to change into!”

He was already in the captain’s quarters when she caught up with him. _Damn tall people with their kriffing longer legs._ She walked in to find him sort of… leaning into the wall… She was about to ask if he was alright, when he shifted, and part of the wall moved aside to reveal an alcove.

She’d thought Artoo had told her about all the hidden compartments, but it seemed there was another.

She couldn’t see properly with him in the way, but it seemed a weird place for a smuggling compartment, and… was that a mirror at the back?

He was still standing there and, frustrated, she peered around him, wondering at the holdup. Then she understood.

The stuff in here wasn’t random junk. OK, there was some stuff that did look like random junk scattered about, but only some. A few pieces of clothing hung from the rail (actually hung up – not just thrown on top of something!) and most of the boxes looked like proper storage rather than random crates.

This was his parents’ actual stuff.

He stood there for what seemed like a long while looking at it, but she wasn’t sure what to say to snap him out of it. Eventually though he shook himself and walked into the alcove, looking around as he did so.

“You’ll need something to wear… Ah! Here.” He peered inside a garment bag hanging from the rail. “Hmm, that’s better than I hoped. I was sure she’d left some clothing or other here from one of the trips she took in the Falcon, but this must have been for some party or other. Perfect for wowing rich idiots.”

Then he left, going so fast that she felt he was leaving more because he didn’t want to spend any more time in this tiny space than for the sake of modesty.

She sighed. She never been much of a dress person. Not because she hated them, but they weren’t very practical for crawling through maintenance tunnels or clambering over pipes, and would quickly get torn and dirty. It seemed a waste to have something you never wore, and pretty dresses eventually became as alien to her life as fathers.

When she opened the bag, this lack of practice revealed itself and she groaned. It was some weird style with lots of draped fabric and panels to wrap around, and what might be a matching shawl or cape, or could be meant for attaching to the skirt. Great for not having to worry about it fitting, but only if she could work out how to get into it.

A great deal of swearing – plus some surprising help from Artoo – later, and she had the dress on correctly. Or at least it seemed to be correct. It covered the bits that needed covering, and it seemed to be arranged in a way that her limited understanding of fashion told her fabric should be arranged. She supposed she could always claim it was a bold new fashion style if somebody pointed out any mistake.

He’d forgotten to hand her any shoes – men! – but she found a nice-looking pair in the corner, and they fit her. She didn’t feel right looking around for jewellery though – it made her feel like a thief – so she wore her medallion. She didn’t know what people would think of a richly-dressed casino patron wearing jewellery representing a poor mining system, but she didn’t care. They’d probably assume she owned it. Not wanting to go without some kind of weapon she strapped her electro-prod to her thigh.

She didn’t have the long, lustrous hair required for elaborate hairstyles (or the skill to create them), so she settled for pulling her hair out of its tie, combing it out, and fluffing it a little. Hopefully the way it sprang away from her face like that would appear to be a proper style and not just something her hair did.

Turning to see herself in the mirror, she almost didn’t recognise the woman standing before her. It was like looking at a stranger. She wanted to run. Then she gripped the medallion. Her sister had given her life so that the Resistance could keep going. The least she could do was pretend to be some elegant rich lady for a few hours in order to separate a few First Order collaborators from their credits. She twirled a little and flapped her arms like a porg to make the fabric swish. It wasn’t remotely practical, but oh, it was so pretty. She wished Pae-Pae was still here, that she could be on this job with her. They could dance all night in pretty dresses and see a fathier race.

But she wasn’t here, and there was no time, or reason, to dance.

After propping the wall panel back in place to prevent any inquisitive porgs getting in and destroying something, she ventured out to see where he was and found him in the main hold. He was still wearing the same outfit.

“Aren’t you getting changed?”

“I did. See?” He waved at himself and, looking properly, she could see a few changes; he’d switched out his usual belt for a leather one with a shiny buckle. The lightsaber he’d made for Rey hung at his belt.

He then picked up the large piece of fabric lying next to him, and she saw he’d unfolded his cowl and was now draping it into a sort of asymmetric cape, which covered the saber hilt and looked more like a fashion choice than of someone trying to hide their face. He pinned it with an ornate brooch that Rose had seen General Organa wearing. He saw her look. “It’s the royal crest of Alderaan.”

“Won’t it give away who you are?”

He shrugged. “Who cares? None of my many, many crimes are linked to the name Ben Solo, and even if they were, Canto Bight doesn’t care so long as I have credits and don’t murder anyone on casino property. There’s an extremely tacky market for Alderaanian goods – you should see how much even a small bottle of Toniray wine goes for – so people will more likely just assume I’m a collector.”

He adjusted the cloak, trying to find the optimum position for hiding his weapon without making it obvious that he was hiding a weapon, before picking up the pair of dice that normally hung from a chain in the cockpit, and hung them from the brooch. “There. How do I look?”

She looked him over and had to admit that, unimaginative as the outfit was, it worked. He’d made some effort to spruce it up a little – he’d cleaned it, shined the boots, and even brushed his hair. It was plainer than most of the outfits she’d seen worn on Canto Bight, even with the brooch and buckle adding some shine, but the fabric was of decent quality and enough of the patrons had been wearing solid and unadorned black that he’d just come across as understated rather than out of place.

If anything she would stand out in red – the favoured colours had seemed to be black, white or gold – but it was pretty, and she didn’t feel like getting into another fight with an article of clothing, if there even were any dresses for her to change into.

“Not bad.” He nodded, accepting the compliment.

<<Acceptable.>> adds Artoo, and BB-8 chimes reluctant agreement, still not seeming to be warming to his new companion.

“What about me?” She attempted a twirl, only to trip over a pile of junk, and awkwardly have to right herself.

“Hmm.”

“Hmm?! How come I only get a ‘Hmm’?”

He ignored her and walked into one of the bunk rooms, tossing a, “Sit down.” over his shoulder. She looked over at the two droids, but she only got confused beeps in return. Annoyed, she remained standing. She was not going to let herself have orders barked at her.

He left the crew quarters and went into the captain’s quarters, and then came back in. He re-emerged carrying a few things, one of which she recognised as a cosmetics palette belonging to one of the surviving Resistance shuttle pilots (well, she had been surviving until a week ago). The others were brushes.

He held them out to her.

Oh. Oh no. “No way!”

He rolled his eyes at her refusal. “It’ll look weird if you’re all dressed up but you forgot to do your face.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my face!”

“I’m not saying there is! But you’ve been here before. Tell me I’m wrong.”

She wanted to. Telling him he was wrong was the best thing. But she had to admit that all the humanoid women she’d seen had seemed to be wearing more paint than an art gallery, as had a few of the men, and many beings she couldn’t determine the gender of.

Still, she didn’t think it would be that weird. Maybe a few people would sneer, but so what? It wasn’t as if that was an arrestable offence, even for Canto Bight.

“I walked around here with my face bare last time and nobody seemed to care, and at least now I’m not wearing a jumpsuit.” She folded her arms, smirking in triumph. _Ha! Can’t argue that, can you, Mr. Forgot-to-do-Your-Face?_

“Yes, you walked around with your face bare, and then that face got arrested, if that part of that thief’s story was true.” _Dammit._

Being able to tell him that he was wrong was indeed a great experience, but oh so frustratingly rare. Damn him. She and Finn had escaped before they’d been properly processed, so the authorities hadn’t gotten biographical information or biometrics, but they’d been wandering around the casino for a while and probably appeared on a lot of cams, meaning her face was in the system even if no other identifying information was. It didn’t matter if security didn’t have her fingerprints, or her name, or know her favourite colour (which, for the record, was green), if she could be recognised by anybody who had seen a security holo.

She took the palette, and looked down at it, but she’d hardly ever worn makeup in her life – she’d just never had any reason to, especially as even basic things became hard to obtain once the First Order had invaded, certainly luxury goods – and the times she had, Paige had done it.

She was pretty sure _that one_ was for eyes, and _that one_ was for cheeks… or was it the other way round…?

He sighed and took the damn thing back off her. “Sit down.”

“Do you even know how to apply makeup?”

“I watched my mother apply the stuff. And I used to do calligraphy. I can handle this.”

“I don’t even know what that is!”

“Just sit down and stay still!”

She rolled her eyes and grumbled but did as she was told. He could hardly do a worse job than her, and after she’d washed it off she’d just go back into the alcove where the dress had been and see if she could find something to use as a veil.

He had a steady hand though, she could give him that. He lined her eyes with something, then dabbed some powder onto her eyelids. Then he began painting lines all over her face; she assumed he was applying some sort of foundation and was going to blend it, but he sat back before doing so. “There!”

She turned to the droids for an opinion. Artoo and BB-8 looked back at her for a few moments, before BB-8 extended a welding torch with the flame lit. The hesitation didn’t bode well though. She got up and checked her face in the mirror in the fresher. The eyes were about normal, though she had no real idea if they were considered good in the view of people who cared about this stuff.

The rest of his work though, was… weird. He’d covered her nose and cheeks in lines and swirls. She thought it looked pretty silly, but it would hopefully make it harder for any security cameras to match her face to that of the escaped criminal from a few weeks ago. The design reminded her of something, and looking down, she realised he’d borrowed elements from her medallion. That combined with his steady hand meant that they looked deliberate rather than the work of a crazy person (though they _were_ the work of a crazy person) and with patrons from all over the galaxy, people would assume it was some custom from a world they had not visited.

She still wasn’t sure about complimenting him, so all she said when she returned to the hold was, “It’s fine.”

He didn’t seem to expect anything more, nodding in acceptance, before picking up a bulging pouch and hanging it from the opposite side of his belt to his lightsaber.

“I didn’t think we had enough credits to fill a pouch that much.”

“We don’t. I just filled it up with random nuts and bolts lying around. I wanted to bring something to stash credits in, but if I walk in carrying an empty credit pouch it’d probably attract more attention than if I ran in swinging my lightsaber.”

Smart plan. She’d stashed the few credits she did have in a hidden pocket in the dress, so if anyone tried to call their bluff she could flash something at least.

He bowed, slightly awkwardly and held his arm out, elbow bent. “Shall we, my lady?”

*****

The four days it took to get to Cantonica felt more like four years. His desire for vengeance against those who had taken Rey from him was strong, but not enough to silence the ever-present self-doubt. ( _You? What can you do? You screw up everything you do, yet you think this is something you could succeed at? Even a true hero couldn’t manage this, and you are nowhere near that – just a monster, and not even a good one at that; you have to wear a mask in a feeble attempt to attempt to hide how weak you are…_ )

He’d wondered sometimes, how much of his confusion was down to Snoke’s influence. Was he feeding all those feelings of doubt in order to push his apprentice? Some sort of test, like resisting the Light? That once he was alone in his own head, could think for himself, things would fall into place and the conflict would be gone.

But no. All Snoke’s death had done was sever the cord that bound him to something, however awful that thing might have been. Now he was unmoored, lost. And the mess inside his head, all the weakness and fear, it had all been him. He was his own worst enemy, and always had been. No wonder everyone he’d ever known had wanted rid of him.

He almost missed Snoke’s hold on his mind. Any time the confusion and conflict had become too much, the pull of the light too strong, his master would cut through everything with harsh rebukes and reminders, issuing some new command, or giving his apprentice a new test to force him ever onward. Being a monster on a leash made things so simple. He’d desperately believed that maybe if he went far enough down this path he’d found himself on, everything would make sense and the conflict would end.

In the aftermath of killing Snoke, he had sought control through power, hoping that if he took the place of his master, he could achieve mastery over himself as he did over the galaxy. But he had not even managed either of those things.

Then he’d hoped he’d find some measure of absolution in turning himself in to his mother and her gang. It would be painful, and might result in his execution, but it would have been worth it, and his death would have been quick. And he would have been able to see Rey again, tell her all the things he’d wanted to say. He would have closure, a sense of finality.

But he’d been denied that. No chance to submit himself to his mother’s judgement and receive whatever justice she felt he deserved, swiftly and fairly. No chance to tell her how many regrets he had, how he’d wished he could take all his actions back. No chance to tell Rey he loved her. Or thought he did at least. He was a monster after all, probably not capable of love, just an imitation, feelings of infatuation for someone he could never have. Perhaps it was better that he’d never gotten the opportunity to burden her with whatever passed for a heart for him.

But her loss burned. Her death was his fault. He’d brought her into this. He’d led the attack that had brought the First Order to her planet. He’d taken her on Takodana instead of calling in reinforcements and searching for that droid just a little longer. He’d killed one of the few people who had ever shown her any affection, right in front of her. He’d sought to defend himself, telling her the truth of what had happened the night he had fled Luke’s temple, and led her to believe that he was better than he was (it wasn’t as if she needed a warning against Luke doing the same to her – she wasn’t a monster, after all). He’d caused her to think he was worth saving – worth _anything_ – leading her to travel to him. He’d helped build – and gone on to command – the organisation that had killed her.

He destroyed everything he touched.

He owed it to her to avenge her death, however futile a gesture it might be.

And what else could he do? Drift forever through the galaxy in this ship that was a memorial to all that he’d thrown away in pursuit of a goal that had always been beyond his reach, forever looking over his shoulder, letting the First Order’s actions pass without even a comment?

No, this was all he had. He would take down as many of the bastards as he could, destroy destroy destroy, until he was brought down. It was probably the one thing he was good at. He might as well put his tendency to ruin everything to use.

But the whispers would not cease. _You are so useless you wouldn’t even be effective at sabotaging something._

He kept constantly busy, throwing himself into repairs. He talked as well, desperate to fill the quiet of his head. Stories of his childhood, tales of the old rebellion that his parents and their friends had told him, without the layers of embellishment that had been added in retellings passed around by people who hadn’t been there (though probably some embellishment by people who had), even gossip he’d picked up about New Republic senators. The memories hurt, but it was better than sitting in silence.

When he ran out of things to say, he listened to her. About a hard but not terrible childhood on a freezing cold Outer Rim mining colony with her parents and sister. About a life that had become even harder when the First Order took over and instituted impossible quotas with brutal reprisals for failure or defiance, which had become deadly when they had stripped the mines of resources and used the planet for target practice.

When they ran out of repairs that could be done with parts they had on hand and while the ship was in hyperspace, he resorted to cleaning. The thought that Han Solo would be more insulted at that than being murdered was simultaneously amusing, comforting and painful.

Checking the navicomp, he saw they were almost there, and should probably get changed into something that’d fit in better. He was pretty sure that there was some nicer clothing in the sealed-off section of the captain’s quarters that Uncle Lando had told him had been a dressing room, but Han had lacked any sense of style and just used it for storage of valuables instead.

He heard Rose shout something after him, but didn’t catch it and didn’t care to stop and ask. He’d done a thorough check of all the hidden compartments on the ship, but he’d avoided this one, and wasn’t looking forward to what he’d find.

He remembered the trick to moving the panel aside, having seen Han do it often enough, helped along with a small application of the Force. Finding what he needed should have been equally simple, but as soon as he looked inside, he froze, overwhelmed. After a week in the Falcon, he thought he’d become inured against the constant assault of memories. At least enough that it all faded into a dull background ache with only occasional spikes of acute pain. But this was like going from Hoth to Mustafar.

No matter where he looked there were echoes and pain. A painting that some artist had gifted to the family depicting his parents in heroic poses, which had made his father feel so awkward that it had never been hung up. A small trinket box that he’d never seen before but clearly belonged to his mother. His old tooka doll could be seen sticking out from under the lid of a box that probably contained even more of his old toys. A box of clothing that he’d brought on trips with Han and Chewie, long since grown out of; unlike everything else on the ship, it was carefully and neatly folded.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, but slowly he became aware of Rose standing behind him probably wondering why he was standing there like an idiot. He could see a box in the corner piled with clothing that had belonged to Han – nicer things bought after he helped save a galaxy and married a princess and found himself thrown into a social scene where he was the recipient of snide glances and whispers about the motivation behind the marriage being more to do with Leia’s pregnancy than anything else (whispers that had persisted long enough to be heard and understood by the result of that pregnancy). There would be something in there that would be perfect for a high class casino, but he would rather take another shot from Chewie’s bowcaster than look through it.

He shook himself and fought back against the deluge of memory, forcing himself to step inside; he might not be able to examine anything too closely, but he refused to be defeated and forced to run away from a closet as if he was a child afraid of monsters. He was the only monster here.

Besides, Rose would not be so afflicted, not having directly or indirectly caused the death of any of the owners of this stuff. Muttering to himself without really hearing what he was saying in an effort to focus on the task at hand and block out everything else, he glanced at the clothing rail and saw a garment bag. A quick peek inside showed a swathe of brightly-coloured, expensive-looking fabric. He shoved it into her arms and fled.

It was only after he was in the main hold that it occurred to him it might not fit, but he had no intention of going back in there. She was a good problem solver; she’d figure it out.

Since he wasn’t going to be wearing anyone else’s clothes, he’d have to make do with his own. Luckily black was considered perfect formal wear, and he’d just washed it, but it was just that bit too plain and sombre.

He started rummaging around in drawers and boxes, hoping to stumble on… he didn’t know what. He wasn’t particularly a fashion expert and had never had to put much thought into outfits. The BB unit, which had been loitering in here, began following him around, beeping at him accusingly, as if this wasn’t his ship (even if it didn’t feel like it belonged to him).

“Oh, do be quiet. Or at least help me look for something to make this outfit more… l don’t know… more interesting.”

It considered him for a moment, head tilted, and then rolled up to a crate and bumped against it a few times. He peered inside to see a porg crouching amidst a collection of random objects, including a black belt with a shiny metal buckle, and a brooch featuring the crest of the royal house of Alderaan. He sighed inwardly (if the creatures were going to be a permanent fixture, he really needed to start doing a better job of porg-proofing the ship) and Force Pulled the items into his hand, not wanting to risk injury if their removal was met with protest. He would never live it down if he got savaged by something so adorable.

But at least he didn’t have to venture back into a space that not only contained painful memories but likely also a haIf-naked woman at this point.

The belt was nice, but wasn’t designed to hold a lightsaber (unsurprising, as it had probably belonged to his father), and there was no way he was leaving it behind – he was more than able to defend himself with the Force alone if they ran into trouble, and it risked giving them away, but his mind rebelled at walking into hostile territory without a weapon. So he grabbed some tools and set about adding a hook. He could just drape his cowl so that it hung from his shoulders like a cape, which would at least hide his saber from a casual glance.

The droid went back to ignoring him, which was fine with him.

Job done, he fastened the belt around his waist and went to hang his saber from it, but then hesitated. While his improvised cape would cover it, there was no way of hiding it completely (unless he planned to hold himself perfectly rigid the whole time he was there and avoid any kind of breeze or draught), so there was a high chance someone might see it. And a small chance someone might recognise it. Some of the people here would be First Order allies and may have worked closely enough to have some familiarity or heard rumours.

And even for those who could not identify it as a specific weapon with a particular reputation, it was a harsh and functional tool; he would not be able to pass it off as an antique blade looted from the corpse of a Jedi Knight, carried purely for aesthetics.

Since going weaponless was not in any way an option, after a long moment of hesitation, he Pulled the saber he had made for Rey to him. It felt like sacrilege to carry it – it was for her, and he wasn’t worthy. But he had no other option. He hoped she would understand – he had committed worse crimes (though in this moment he couldn’t think of any). The hilt was hardly beautiful, but at least looked like it could be an antique, and had a simple, utilitarian look to it.

Before he could add the cloak, Rose entered the room. He blinked a few times in shock, barely recognising her. BB-8 let out a high pitched beep.

She seemed equally surprised, though for the opposite reason. “Aren’t you getting changed?”

“I did. See?” he replied, indicating the belt. She didn’t look convinced.

He reached down and picked up his cowl, draped over the bench, wrapping it around his shoulders so that it hung down one side while being open on the other, pinning it in place with the brooch.

Rose looked at it curiously, so he explained, “It’s the royal crest of Alderaan.”

She frowned at this. “Won’t it give away who you are?”

He shrugged. “Who cares? None of my many, many crimes are linked to the name Ben Solo, and even if they were, Canto Bight doesn’t care so long as I have credits and don’t murder anyone on casino property. There’s an extremely tacky market for Alderaanian goods – you should see how much even a small bottle of Toniray wine goes for – so people will more likely just assume I’m a collector.”

He adjusted the cloak, trying to find the optimum position for hiding the lightsaber without looking too much like he was hiding something, while also ensuring it looked like a deliberate sartorial choice and not like he didn’t know how scarves worked, before picking up Han’s golden dice (though they hadn’t brought _him_ much luck as far as he could see) and hanging them from the brooch. “There. How do I look?”

She looked him up and down. “Not bad.”

The droids beeped in agreement (BB-8’s was somewhat more reluctant).

“What about me?” She whirled round, trying to twirl, only to trip over, flailing in order to right herself. The flailing had more of less the same effect as a twirl would have had though, so he got the idea.

“Hmm.” The dress is nice, but there is something missing that, while it shouldn’t be considered essential, would nonetheless make the outfit look unfinished. There was no makeup, which would attract more comment then a small pin holding his cloak.

She glared at him, obviously insulted. “Hmm?! How come l only get a ‘Hmm’?”

Not bothering to give her an answer, he made his way to one of the bunk rooms, telling her to sit down as he did so. He was sure he’d seen a cosmetics palette in one of the drawers, left there by some Resistance fighter who had considered it part of their uniform, but was far beyond needing it now. He found it quickly enough, but there didn’t seem to be anything to apply any of it with, so he detoured to the captain’s quarters and picked up his calligraphy brushes from the box.

He returned to find her still standing, of course. He didn’t even bother to roll his eyes.

He held the tools out to her, but she refused, putting her hands out in front of her as if to ward them off. “No way!”

Now he did roll his eyes. “It’ll look weird if you’re all dressed up but you forgot to do your face.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my face!”

He bit back a sigh. “I’m not saying there is! But you’ve been here before. Tell me I’m wrong.”

He could tell from her glare that she desperately wanted to, but as Mustafar would freeze over before a wealthy woman would go without cosmetics, she only had one card to play here…

“I walked around here with my face bare last time and nobody seemed to care, and at least now I’m not wearing a jumpsuit.” She stated this defiantly, as he couldn’t deny that had happened. But in her determination to spite him she was missing the obvious and had stumbled into a trap.

“Yes, you walked around with your face bare, and then that face got arrested, if that part of that thief’s story was true.”

Perhaps he wasn’t that bad at Sabbacc after all…

She took the palette with obvious reluctance, but then just stared down at it as if he’d handed her a mysterious artefact from a lost ancient civilisation. Didn’t all girls know this stuff? Well he didn’t have time for her to figure it out. They would be emerging from hyperspace at any moment.

Sighing, he took it back off her. “Sit down.”

She ignored him. Of course. “Do you even know how to apply makeup?”

“I watched my mother apply the stuff. And I used to do calligraphy. I’m sure I can handle this.” Really, how hard could it be?

“I don’t even know what that is!” she grumbled, frustrated.

“Just sit down and stay still!”

She rolled her eyes and grumbled under her breath but did as she was told, miracle of miracles.

Okay… shit. What was he supposed to do? Think… Right, okay… There was supposed to be something the same colour as the face to go all over, right? But looking from Rose’s face to the palette and back again, there didn’t seem to be anything that matched. Were you supposed to mix colours together, like blending inks? But he knew from that that creating a new shade involved a lot of test patches and trial and error, and there wasn’t time for experimentation.

The goal here was to obscure her features enough to hide her identity anyway, and a simple base wouldn’t do enough to be worth the effort. Besides, her skin looked fine and his brushes were mainly for fine detail, so that’s what he’d concentrate on.

He lined her eyes and painted the lids, then leaned back to consider the effect. The effect altered her eyes slightly, but it wasn’t enough to be a truly effective disguise. Some paint to the lips failed to help much, as all he could really do was change the colour – trying to change the shape risked her looking like a clown.

Well, fuck. He’d succeeded in adding something that would be considered a necessary part of her outfit, which was something. But it wasn’t enough to obscure her face and any casino worth its salt would be festooned with hovercams equipped with facial recognition tech. Usually it was just set to pick up known cheats and banned patrons and ignored any other crimes (because casinos didn’t care how you obtained your credits, so long as it wasn’t from them), but if Canto Bight’s were more widely equipped and set to identify any lawbreakers, then Rose would set alarms ringing as soon as they stepped out of the Falcon.

But what else could he do? He’d done the eyes and the lips, and there was nothing else but the face itself... Aha! Some sort of elaborate facial markings would do the trick. It had to look like a deliberate design though… The medallion she was wearing had a pattern of intersecting swirls and lines, so he used that as a basis, echoing it enough that it seemed clear there was a theme at play, but differed enough to be more a motif than a direct copy. Short of some baffleweave falling from the sky, it was their best option.

“There!” he said, sitting back and admiring the finished effect.

She looked to the droids for an opinion, but as they knew less about the applying of cosmetics than he did, they couldn’t provide a satisfactory answer, so she went into the fresher to check the mirror there.

Her assessment was, “It’s fine.” Not exactly a resounding endorsement, but he’d take what he could get. He picked up the dummy moneybag he’d put together, which she found convincing enough to be confused as to how he’d managed to find credits to fill it. He hadn’t, of course, but it was a good idea to look like they had credits to spend. He’d learned well enough from Han that a good bluff was necessary to get into the game. Though he’d also observed that being able to back up the bluff was eventually necessary, so he would need to acquire actual credits as soon as possible; this was where things had tended to go awry for his father, who was rarely able to handle that part. Right up until he had backed up his words with a deed, at the cost of his own life…

No. Don’t think about that.

The alarm notifying them that they’d dropped out of hypserpace blared. They had things to do.

*****

Communication with docking control went smoothly, though that was to be expected, the place might have a reputation for exclusivity, but as a resort it was hardly going to turn potential customers away without good reason. They would only be rejected at this stage if the ship’s ID was flagged as stolen or belonging to someone who was banned or deemed troublesome. Once they landed though, that would be where things got tricky. The place might welcome continued waves of chumps to bleed dry, but they still needed to make some attempt to weed out riff-raff. They would demand identification, tickets, passes.

(He tried to ignore how easily he slipped into his father’s speech patterns as he negotiated landing clearance, reeling off an alias for the ship without a second’s thought, as if this was what he’d been doing all his life, instead of...)

He navigated to where they were told and landed. Desperate to avoid any introspection in the silence left by the engines’ shutdown, he leapt out of his seat and bowed, attempting to recall every lesson in manners his mother had tried to bestow, and offers an arm to his companion. “Shall we, my lady?”

“Sure, let’s go,” she said, taking his arm. “But I have a bad feeling about this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Just as a heads up: In order to ~~remind myself of what I'd written~~ get back into the swing of things after being on hiatus for a few months, I reread the whole thing,  &... there were a few things that bugged me so I made changes. Mostly just small things - tweaking a phrasing here, correcting some tense-shifting there, fixing the odd typo (seriously I am fine with people pointing out shit like this). Though I did rewrite a portion of chapter 1 - while the TIE Silencer is a compact vessel, I'd blithely figured it at least had enough room to accommodate two people if one was shoved behind the seat or something, & I couldn't figure out a way to get rid of the nosy officer any earlier, but after rereading I realised how bloody cramped it would get pretty damn quick so I figured out a way to ditch him more quickly. Though it meant I had to pass up the chance to insult Hux. Alas.
> 
> \- If you're wondering exactly what Rose's dress looks like... yeah so am I. I kinda just figured out my brain is weirder than I thought & [doesn't do a thing that most other people's brains do](http://sinistercinnamon.tumblr.com/post/179126283671/hooooolllllllyyyy-shhhhiiiiitttttt-you-mean-this). I just thought red was a nice colour for the dress to be & I figured it'd be best to involve a lot of draping fabric to account for any sizing differences (& confuse Rose a little). But nothing beyond that. I didn't have a specific dress in mind that I wanted to use, like I did when I wrote _Marry in Haste_. So if I'm slacking on describing visuals then it's actually not intentional. Is this a problem for people? Am I being annoyingly vague? Or do people who can make the pictures in their head prefer to have the freedom to imagine shit how they like?
> 
> \- I actually spent time carefully working out how long it would take the Falcon to get from Ahch-To because accuracy is important. There was maths involved, & a ruler. I'm not entirely sure I agree with [the assessment of the Falcon's speed](https://www.tor.com/2014/12/08/star-wars-how-fast-is-the-millennium-falcon/) that I used, as I'm not sure the journey they use as an estimate took that long. They do offer a range of speeds to use, but since I want to give the First Order time to get comfortable, I went fuck it & used the estimate of 25,000 light years per day they favoured, which gave me 3.33 days.  
>    
> \- Han using Lando's cloak closet as a walled off storage room [is actual canon](https://www.starwars.com/news/haynes-star-wars-millennium-falcon-interview) BTW.
> 
>  
> 
> Next: Kylo Ren Gets A Hug

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found on Tumblr [here](http://sinistercinnamon.tumblr.com/).


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